Homemade Pizza

I cannot tell you how excited I am that tomorrow is Sunday!!! That means Judah and I get to finally sleep in! He had to work last Sunday so we have been getting up at 6 am for ten days straight now. That wouldn't be too terrible except that we rarely get to bed earlier than 11 at night. And I need to get about 8 hours every night. I've always been that way. So yes, tomorrow morning when I don't get woken up by his blaring alarm, it's going to feel amazing :D

On the Maple front, she is adjusting well!! I had her out of the cage for about four hours yesterday! She is very skittish around us, but that's to be expected. She has been munching away on lettuce leafs. This morning it didn't take her over an hour to finally start eating when I put a leaf in her cage and she finally drank from her water bottle! I'm gonna take her out a lot again today. I'm not sure that she's pregnant. They say you could feel the babies inside her if she was, and I don't feel anything when I touch her stomach, so I guess we will see :)


The other night I made homemade pizza since my dad finally shipped the bridal shower gifts I received when I was home. Which included this pizza stone from my friend Jen. I was so excited when she gave this to me because I LOVE homemade pizza. :D

Homemade Pizza Dough (Courtesy of my friend, Kacie B.)
     1.5 cups warm water
     2 tsp yeast
     2 tsp sugar
     2 tsp salt
     4.5 cups flour
     2 tbsp olive oil

Start by mixing the yeast, sugar and water together, letting it sit for about ten minutes so the yeast can activate. Next combine the salt, olive oil, and flour.

This time I used 2 cups all purpose flour, 2 cups bread flour, and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and it's the best tasting dough I've had yet! The wheat flour adds a subtle flavor to it and I've found the bread flour works really well in dough recipes. I used it in my tortilla recipe last week with great results.

You don't need to knead the dough too much and you want it slightly sticky but not so much that it sticks to the side of the bowl. Then coat it in a little olive oil and let it rest under a damp cloth for an hour so the dough can rise.

I've gotten into the habit of punching down my dough when it is ready, then letting it rest ten more minutes before I roll it out. To punch down dough, you literally use your fist to push down the center of the dough then fold in the sides to make another dough ball.

To give you an idea how much this recipe makes, that is a 15" pizza stone and I got three pies out of it.  Then top with your favorite sauce, cheese, and toppings :D

We use Ragu pizza sauce and this week we put sausage on our pizza.

Yummy!!

Judah also put mushrooms on one of the pies, but I loathe mushrooms. Who wants to eat fungus? Not this girl, sorry.

I haven't tried it yet, but I read that you can freeze pizza dough. Make the recipe, but instead of letting it rise, immediately package it and place it in the freezer. Then the day that you want to make pizza, let it sit out on the counter all day under a damp cloth and it will rise in about eight hours. I haven't found reason to freeze things for the future yet, but I may try this sometime just to see how well it works!

Oh, and the pizza stone worked pretty well!! I think it might be better to preheat the stone in the oven since our third pizza definitely had the crispiest crust. It also may have been a little better if I had remembered to use the cooling racks Jen had also given me, since the crust softened a little as it cooled on the countertop. Lessons learned for next time :)

Readers: Have you made homemade pizza dough? Do you prefer homemade to take out? What are your favorite toppings?