Saturday, August 11, 2012

Homemade Pizza

I have been searching for a worthwhile pizza recipe to use at home for a while. I want a balance of crisp crust with a chewy interior. Most recipes I have tried in the past were either too bready, lacking exterior crispness or turned too crisp and lacked chew. On top of that I was looking for a somewhat yeasty, sweet flavour to the crust without having to let it sit in the fridge for three to five days to develop flavour (who really has that much foresight anyway)?

I wanted to use my bread machine because it's easy to clean and it is on hand most of the time (unlike my KitchenAid mixer which gathers dust until Christmas cookie baking occurs). I stumbled upon a bread machine recipe at All Recipes called Bread Machine Pizza Dough which is really easy to make and work with. I usually have to add a bit of flour to my work surface before I pan it as it comes out on the sticky side. As written it is a wonderful recipe. I usually crank the heat to 550°F and cook the pizza on a 16" perforated aluminum pizza pan for 10-12 minutes.

For a sauce I usually use another found on All Recipes called Exquisite Pizza Sauce. Again, it's super simple and extremely tasty. I make it as written except leave out the anchovy paste as I don't usually have it on hand.

Yesterday I made a couple of pizzas using the crust recipe mentioned above and a neapolitan sauce recipe which I didn't like so I'm not going to bother posting it. I doubled the crust recipe and made a Margherita pizza with fresh mozzarella and basil and a loaded pizza using brick mozzarella, Italian sausage, bacon, pepperoni, red onion and green olives.

The results? Check 'em out:


I found a couple more pics of pizzas I've made using the recipes posted above. The first was made with deli pepperoni, speck, green pepper, onion and olives. The second was topped the same with Piller's pepperoni instead of deli pepperoni.


As a personal aside, my favourite pepperoni is made by Bridgford I buy the pre-sliced packs for my pizzas whenever I can, I buy the sticks for my pepperoni rolls.

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