Pizza, Pizza!

What's better on a Friday night than a frozen pizza you can pop in the oven to feed the kids while you escape with your hubby for the evening? My sister-in-law asked me for this recipe earlier this week, reminding me that this would be a good one to post.

Jay's Signature Pizza Crust

INGREDIENTS

· 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

· 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

· 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

· 1 teaspoon salt

· 2 tablespoons olive oil

· 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.

2. Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour.

3. Turn dough out onto a clean, well floured surface, and knead in more flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth. Let the dough rise until double; this should take about 1 hour. Punch down the dough, and form a tight ball. Allow the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Use for your favorite pizza recipe.

4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). If you are baking the dough on a pizza stone, you may place your toppings on the dough, and bake immediately. If you are baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it.

5. Bake pizza in preheated oven, until the cheese and crust are golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

*Note: to keep the crust from baking to my pan I generously sprinkle some cornmeal on the pizza stone.

I love homemade pizzas! This is not only because they taste better and are incredibly cheap (around $1.75-ish for one medium sized pizza, depending on your toppings) but also, once you find a good dough recipe, you can play around with whatever toppings you want. Pepperoni is a standard favorite around here. We've also done plain old cheese, supreme, BBQ chicken (BBQ sauce, red onion, and cooked, chopped chicken dipped in more BBQ sauce), our own version of Papa Murphy's garlic chicken, and (only liked by mommy) spinach, feta, and sun-dried tomatoes. Oh, and our favorite tomato base is Shirley J's Pizza and Pasta Seasoning Mix - (1 T. of the seasoning to 1 small can of tomato sauce - we use just less than 2 cans to one batch of dough).
What I usually do is mix up a batch of the pizza dough, split it into thirds, make 2 pizzas for dinner that night, and then par-bake the last 1/3 of the dough and freeze that separately for a quick dinner for me and the kids on a night when Ric isn't going to be home for dinner. This is my ugly shaped crust:
So to par-bake them, you get the crust all shaped and then bake it at 500 degrees for 3 minutes, remove it from the pan/pizza stone and let it cool completely. At this point, you can just wrap it up and freeze it, or you could also throw all your toppings on and freeze it all ready to go. Either way, when you're ready to eat it, you heat the oven to 400 degrees and bake for 10-15 minutes (once the crust is golden brown and all of the cheese is melted). OR, you could just freeze the dough in blobs before you let it raise. So many options....!