If you have not made a homemade pizza and you or someone in your family loves pizza, what are you waiting for? It is so easy and the instructions below are truly the easiest I’ve ever tried. This method is really “no fail”. Honest!
I’ve made pizza on the grill, on the kamado type grills (we use this one). I’ve used a pizza stone, a cast iron pizza pan, which I love, a pizza peel which is pretty necessary with most methods of making pizza. But the method I love the best of all can be done on a cookie sheet with no stone, no peel . . nothing special.
Since taking Peter Reinhart’s Perfect Pizza at Home class, this is the only way I’ve made pizza and I want you all to try it . . it’s unbelievably easy! The class is free at Craftsy. If you don’t want to watch the videos, you don’t have to but they are so useful and he has such a calming voice. You can simply sign up (remember . . it’s free), and download the recipes.
The recipe I love is the Sicilian recipe. It’s a very wet dough. The first time you make it, you will be sure you’ve not added enough flour. Trust him . . it works. I use my kitchen scale and weigh the ingredients. By having plenty of olive oil on my parchment paper beneath the crust and rubbing a little olive oil on top, it makes for a crust that is crispy on the bottom and has a good “done” top so it doesn’t get soggy with the sauce added.
Pizza Crust
Another reason I love this crust is that it takes a bit less than half the recipe and I divide the remaining dough into thirds, keep it in the fridge for up to a week and make focaccia for three nights with it.
For my pizza sauce, I simply heat a little olive oil, saute some chopped onion and garlic, add a quart jar of my home canned tomatoes, a little oregano, basil, fennel seeds . . whatever you want to add, and simmer til it’s thick. Sometimes I’ll throw in oregano or basil stems just to give it more flavor, and then fish them out when the sauce is thick. Honestly, you can use storebought pizza sauce and it won’t ruin your pizza. It won’t be as good as homemade but chances are, no one will even notice!
Pizza Sauce
The toppings can be whatever you want them to be. I always use turkey pepperoni because it’s less greasy. For this pizza, I used shaved deli ham, sweet onions from the garden, black olives, grated low fat mozzarella and fresh mozzarella.
Ready to Bake
This size pizza gives us enough for dinner, which we have every Friday or Saturday night, and then enough leftover for lunch one day.
Ready to Eat
If you’re lucky enough to have a place near you where you can buy good already made or even take and bake pizza, that’s great but for those of us who don’t have that option . . you can’t beat this pizza . . the taste or the ease in creating.
A friend has a new wood fired pizza oven and I keep begging for one of those but for now, my kitchen oven will have to suffice.
Karen Langseth says
Just a quick question…do you prebake your dough?? It sorta looks that way on the picture.
And your right homemade pizza is the best, I’ve always made it and most of my friends thought I was nuts because you could just order from the local pizza joint, but I prefer the homemade.
JudyL says
Karen, I do prebake it but not completely. I found that if I used fresh mozzarella, it tended to burn during the long baking time but if I prebake the crust, at least partially, the fresh mozzarella doesn’t scorch. Vince thinks one of the takeout places here in town is ok and I can hardly eat it. I know there are some places that have really good pizza places but we do not here and we didn’t in MO. I think it costs a whole lot less to make your own too.
Ranch Wife says
Pizza is on the menu for tomorrow for us. I’m making mine in the cast iron skillet. I signed up for that Craftsy class way back when, but I haven’t watched it yet. You’re right though…hard to beat homemade pizza!
myrna sossner says
There must be something in the air! Two days ago I bought 16 oz. of fresh pizza dough from Publix, opened a container of frozen tomato sauce I made a couple of months ago, roasted slices of eggplant, sliced mushrooms, and little sweet peppers, put it all on the sauce, topped it with grated mozzarella cheese, sprinkled it with dried basil and baked it on a corn meal covered cookie sheet. Final word ……… yum! And this was my first time … not the last!!!
JudyL says
Pretty amazing, huh?
lynne quinsland says
instant yeast is now on my grocery list. i may just go today just for that since i WANT pizza NOW! i finally watched peter’s excellent class yesterday afternoon. what a great way to spend the afternoon. he is so informative and you are right, he does have an easy to listen to voice.
we had gotten pizza last week from a place only 2 miles from us and WOW, it was the best pizza i had ever eaten. the crust was amazing! after watching peter, i believe it is because of the fermenting–it had all the characteristics that he was describing with the classic crust. we eat pizza atleast once a week–i am sure that we will be making it most of the time now ;o)
Carol says
I’m always interested in your posts making pizza. I’ll have to watch the video you recommend for the dough. I’m not a bread dough making person. I usually turn it over to my bread machine. I have a question about the sauce. What is the difference in how you make the sauce for pizza and the sauce you would make for spaghetti and meatballs? Recently you mentioned you didn’t care for marinara sauce. How is marinara different? I guess being married to a Sicilian requires you learning all things Italian in food prep! I’m glad you went into detail this time on preparing the pizza sauce—just wonder about differences. I’ve always wondered what makes marinara different but my research has not given me an explanation.
Carol says
I’m always interested in your posts making pizza. I’ll have to watch the video you recommend for the dough. I’m not a bread dough making person. I usually turn it over to my bread machine. I have a question about the sauce. What is the difference in how you make the sauce for pizza and the sauce you would make for spaghetti and meatballs? Recently you mentioned you didn’t care for marinara sauce. How is marinara different? I guess being married to a Sicilian requires you learning all things Italian in food prep! I’m glad you went into detail this time on preparing the pizza sauce—just wonder about differences. I’ve always wondered what makes marinara different but my research has not given me an explanation.
JudyL says
No difference! In fact, a lot of time when we have spaghetti and meatballs, I just save the leftover sauce and cook it down a bit more and it becomes pizza sauce. I don’t like marinara but since it’s spread on the pizza crust and then topped with all kinds of yummy ingredients, it’s kinda overpowered and not like seeing a big pile of red sauce on my plate.