pizza crust easy

About six years ago our family went to a friend’s house for dinner on a Friday night. Marcy made homemade pizza and I wasn’t that excited about it because I had never tasted homemade pizza that was actually good. Until that night. Starting the next week I made great pizza on Friday. And I have almost every Friday since. I promised to give the recipe, passed on to my from Marcy but I’m no food blogger so you’ll have to put up with my ways. I’m impatient and I don’t like to measure things but there’s only been one time since I’ve started making this crust that it didn’t turn out. It’s very forgiving. I can can make this, anyone can.

easy homemade pizza crust

For the crust:

1 1/3 cups of warm water

1 packet of active dry yeast

1 cup wheat flour

2 cups all purpose flour (& extra for rolling the dough)

1 ish Tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I never measure this)

1 ish Tablespoon of Honey (I never measure this)

1 ish teaspoon of salt (I never measure this)

preheat your oven to 475*

For the stuff on top: your favorite sauce, your favorite cheese, anything else you have in your house that would be good on pizza easiest pizza crust

Dump the packet of yeast into your warm water into your mixing bowl and let it sit for a few minutes until it blooms. It might take up to 10 minutes but you want it to bubble (ish) and smell like bread. Then dump in all the other ingredients and mix with the bread hook until it’s all sticky. It’s supposed to be a wet dough but if it’s all only sticking to the sides of the bowl, I throw in another handful or two of flour (I almost always have to do this).

easy pizza crust

Once it’s a good consistency dump the dough onto a floured counter and shape into a ball. No need to kneed. I usually rinse out my mixing bowl if there’s a lot of dough stuck to the sides, otherwise I just add a little bit of oil to cover the sides and plop the dough ball right back in and cover it with a cloth. Let it rise for 45ish minutes.Or an hour and a half. Or 30 minutes. It’s never seemed to matter much at my house.

easy pizza crust

This dough makes 2 16 inch pizzas (these are the kind of pans I used to use). But since we’ve moved to our new house our oven is wide and shallow so I had to get new pizza pans that are 14 inch wide (these are the kind of pans I use now). Now I can get 3 pizzas out of the dough. The math doesn’t make sense in my head but I don’t question the pizza, I just eat it.

easy pizza crust

Separate your dough according to your pan size (2 or 3 balls) and put it on a floured counter, roll it out and pop it on your pan. Now, PRECOOK your dough. If you like a crispy crust this works really well. I actually cook my pizza on 500* convection so it’s super hot but I have to watch it really close. If I’m distracted I keep it at 475*.

I put the uncooked dough with nothing on it in the oven for 4-5 minutes (two pizzas at a time, one on the top rack one on the bottom) and then pull them out as they start to get crispy and put the sauce and cheese and whatever else on the top, then rotate them when you put them back in the oven (bottom pizza now gets to be on the top, fun!) and leave them in until the cheese bubbles–about 6 more minutes or so for my oven.

basil head

The best part of #PizzzaFriday is that I use whatever ingredients I have in the fridge. Last week we had leftover BBQ chicken, some fresh mozzarella and I always have basil growing in the planter head.

pizza cutter

Our family loves #pizzafriday. Tonight I’ll be at Emily’s house so Chad is taking the boys out and they actually complained that I wasn’t making pizza. It’s that good.

easy pizza crust