Homemade Pizza Dough

Rarely does a facebook status inspire me to cook something up, but today my sister's status read about homemade pizza dough...and well, off I went to cook up some of my own. I found a recipe online by a fellow blogger who had been testing doughs for weeks. So I trusted in her expertise on the issue and made myself some homemade dough!

Now I will share with you...

Ingredients:

-1 pkg (2 1/2 tsp) dry active yeast

-1 1/3 cups warm water

-3 1/2-3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

-1 tbsp olive oil

-1 tbsp salt (optional)

-1 tbsp sugar (optional-add if you like a puffier crust)

-cornmeal (or flour)

*Substitute 1 cup of multigrain flour if you like!

Directions:

Combine yeast & flour into your mixing bowl and let stand for 5-10 mins until yeast is dissolved and is foaming (this shows you your yeast is "active" and not expired).

Mix in the rest of your ingredients. Mix until it's holding together. The dough should be smooth & elastic, not sticky...if it is, add a bit more flour.

*Note: when I made mine, I had to substitute in some cake & pastry flour, so my dough wasn't all that elastic, but still turned out fine...not sure if this would have happened otherwise

In a separate bowl, lightly grease with some olive oil and transfer your dough into it. Turn it over so that both sides of your dough are coated in a light coat of the oil.

Cover your dough with plastic wrap (or a cleaned, floured dish towel) and let it rise in a WARM place.

*I preheated my oven for a minute, then shut it off and put my dough in!

Let rise for about 90 minutes, or until you see it's about doubled in size.

Punch your dough down (my FAVOURITE part!).

Divide as needed:

ONE HALF: thin crust pizza

TWO HALVES: small pizzas

WHOLE DOUGH: large pizza (thicker crust).

After dividing your dough, roll in to ball(s) and let it rest for about 10 mins before rolling out. This is a good time to preheat your oven to 450F.

To roll out, lightly flour a surface and work out your dough into the shape you'd like. "Decorate" it with toppings, and dust your cooking surface (pizza stone, cookie sheet etc...)with corn meal or flour and place pizza onto your cooking surface.

*to help your pizza toppings from making your dough soggy, brush the dough with a bit of olive oil first

Depending on the thickness of your dough, cook for about 12 minutes, give or take. Broil for a couple of those minutes to crisp up cheese!

MY FAVOURITE TOPPING COMBO!!

-Pasta sauce (plain)

-Shredded marble cheese

-sliced tomatoes

-bacon

-rosemary & basil (this MAKES it!)

sooooo amazing. highly recommended!