Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Quick Pizza Crust

This is one of my old reliables. I always have cheese and turkey pepperoni on hand and can make this in a pinch for lucnh or dinner adding whatever other toppings I might have on hand. For Valentine's Day I cut hearts out of the pepperoni circles and make the crust heartshaped. Currently one pizza feeds my family for dinner, but it won't be too long before I will need to make two. In all this recipe can take as little as 30 minutes-start to eating.

Place pizza stone in oven. Preheat to 450 degrees.

2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
Mix and set aside

1 Tbs yeast
1 Tbs Olive oil
¾ -1c. warm water
Mix oil, water and yeast and let sit for a couple minutes while you prepare toppings. Then add to flour/salt mixture. It is better to have the dough too sticky and add more flour than the other way around.

If making more than one pizza I repeat the steps above in a separate bowl.

Let dough rest while you finish preparing sauce and toppings. Roll kneaded dough into a 14” circle. Transfer to paddle or cookie sheet (I use a thin cookie sheet without sides) sprinkled liberally with corn meal (dough should be able to slide off easily).

Sauce:
1 can pealed crushed tomatoes
1 tsp minced garlic
Italian seasoning (and/or oregano, basil) and salt/pepper to taste
Process in food processer.

Add desired toppings. Transfer to hot pizza stone. Bake for 10 minutes. Take pizza out using the cookie sheet, slice and serve. (I leave the hot pizza stone in the oven and just let it cool down after I turn the oven off)

Note: I have also used this recipe to make calzones. One dough batch makes 3 fair sized calzones. The sauce makes a fair amount (for 3-4 pizzas). I just save the extra in a tuperware in my fridge until the next time I want to make pizza.

2 comments:

Laura said...

This sounds really good! I love pizza and calzones. I have a question though. Any ideas on using whole wheat flour instead of white? I just can't help myself; I LOVE fiber :)

Sarah said...

We have used one cup whole wheat and one cup white flour before and it works. You can taste the wheat a bit, but that just takes getting used to (which probably wont be a problem if you use whole wheat flour a lot anyway)