Not Delivery Pizza

My son Adam and his friend Brad came home to visit this past weekend. They served together in Korea as missionaries for our church. They are now attending Utah State University. Friday evening they went to their mission reunion in Provo and then came to stay with us the remainder of the weekend. This weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. On Saturday evening all of the men went to Priesthood meeting for the conference. After the meeting all of the guys came home and we made pizza. I made the dough earlier in the day and put it in zip-lock bags. I sprayed inside the bags with vegetable oil cooking spray before putting the dough in them. I kept the dough in the refrigerator until about 2 hours before we needed to use it. By the time the guys were back the dough was ready to go. Adam is a pretty good cook and so I put him in charge of making the pizza. He was wondering why the dough suddenly became so hard to roll out. I told him about letting the dough rest. I told him to cover it with the plastic bag for about five minutes while he did something else and then come back to it. He was amazed to see how much easier it was to roll out. He asked why that happens. I explained it has to do with the gluten in the dough and how it gets tight if it's worked too vigorously. Just letting it rest helps the gluten in the dough relax. Brad helped slice the olives and Canadian Bacon and helped with other things. Doug and Brandon set the table and helped with other stuff. We had a fun time building and eating pizza. Everyone helped clean up.

We have only had pizza delivered to our home once in all these years. It was years ago when we were building our fence and we were just too darned tired to cook and too dirty to go out.

Vickie’s Pizza
Dough:
1 ¼ cups very warm water

1 package yeast (2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon sugar

3 ½ -4 cups flour*
½ tsp. salt

2 T. Vegetable oil or extra virgin olive oil
In a large mixing bowl combine, 2 cups of the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Stir. Add the very warm water and the oil. Stir. Add more flour a bit at a time until the dough forms a ball. Knead the dough on a floured surface, adding flour until the dough is moderately stiff. Knead until smooth. Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough once to grease both sides of the dough. (I do all of this in my Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook.)
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm place. Let dough rise about 40 minutes. Punch down. Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a smooth ball. Let dough rest 5 minutes, covered. Roll out on a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough back and forth one direction until it makes an oval the width of your pan. Turn the dough a quarter turn. Re-flour the surface. Roll back and forth the opposite direction. This will give you a near perfect circle. Roll the dough up onto the rolling pin and set it down on a pizza pan which has been sprayed with vegetable oil cooking spray.

Add pizza sauce and other toppings. Don’t preheat the oven. Place the pizza on the bottom rack of the oven and bake at 475 degrees F for 10- 15 minutes. It is done when the cheese bubbles and just starts to turn brown. The crust is golden brown.
Makes 2 pizzas.
Sauce:
26 oz. can Hunts (or your favorite brand) spaghetti sauce. Use about 1/3 of a can for each pizza. Spread it evenly on the pizza. Then sprinkle lightly with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, freshly ground pepper, 1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional), and parmesan cheese. Sprinkle the parmesan a little heavier on the crust’s edge.
Toppings:
Shredded Mozzarella cheese or Italian cheese blend, sliced mushrooms. Low-fat turkey pepperoni, black olives, hot Italian sausage, bell peppers, Canadian bacon, ham, barbequed chicken, caramelized onions or pineapple. The list goes on as long as you can imagine. Adam and Brad said Koreans put potatoes, corn and kimchi on their pizza.

*You may use whole wheat flour for one of the cups of flour. It makes it a little more healthful.