Now Eat The Food!: Pizza Pizza

So do you ever grow suspicious of what exactly is in those store-bought frozen pizzas? Man then can be easy and tasty, but why not try and make your own. Trust me, you'll enjoy this homemade Pizza. Twas truly a hit with my family! Go crazy with the toppings. Mmmm. I tend to make the dough before I go to bed because then you don't have to worry so much about the rising process. And the dough always tastes better if it sits in the fridge for a few hours or overnight!

What you need:

Dough:
2 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast or one of those packets
1 cup of WARM water (quite important i did 2/3 cold and 1/3 hot)
2 cups of plain flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cornmeal (optional)

Pizza Sauce:
1 cup of canned crushed tomatoes or chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp oregano
2-3 leaves of fresh basil, torn into pieces
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
pepper
2 tsp paprika
1 garlic clove, minced and sauteed or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp plain flour (optional)

Toppings:
Well...that's up to you. You just can't forget the cheese, okay?

Ya Ready?

1. First we must prepare the dough! What you need to do is put the yeast in a bowl and add that cup of warm water to it. Make sure it's mixed up well and you need to let it sit for 10-15 minutes or until the yeast water develops a frothy layer on top. That totally means the yeast is all alive, crazy and ready.

2. In another biggish bowl, combine the the flour and yeast water together and mix until you get a doughy ball in the middle. If the dough still has a lot of flour around it, add a tiny amount of water until it all becomes incorporated in the dough. If the dough is too wet, add some more flour - trust me bread is quite forgiving where measurements are concerned. As long as the consistency is right, you're pretty much good to go.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 3-5 minutes with floured hands. The pizza dough should become nice and elastic so then let it rest while you clean out your mixing bowl and drizzle your olive oil in there.

4. Transfer the dough to that oiled bowl and rotate it around so all sides of the dough are coated in the oil. This is to help prevent the dough from sticking to the sides of the bowl while it rises.

5. Cover the dough with a bit of cling film or a lightly dampened towel and put the bowl in a warm place to rise until it doubles in size. (about 20-30 minutes)

6. After the dough has risen, punch it down to its original size again, cover and put in the fridge for a few hours or leave it in there overnight so it can rise again.

7. The next day, or a few hours later, make sure your oven is preheated to 350 F/ 180 C. Get your dough out and onto a lightly floured (or cornmealed!) surface and with floured hands, you want to go ahead and gently stretch that dough out into your desired shape. I chose a circle this time, but y'know...you can make it square or rectangular or triangular, whatever suits ya! Transfer that onto your pizza pan or oven tray.

8. The sauce is dead easy. Put everything in a saucepan on a medium low heat. Mix it all up and let simmer until the some of the liquid evaporates and the sauce gets thicker. Alternatively you can add that teaspoon of flour and thicken it that way. Depends what kind of mood you're in.

9. Let the sauce cool, or you could have used store-bought sauce, makes no difference to me. Spoon it onto your pizza dough stopping about 1 inch from the edge and then you have my permission to put whatever toppings you want on top.