One of my new favorite weekend rituals is to make my own pizzas from scratch. It saves money over spending a small fortune at the local pizza shop (my family can eat a LOT of pizza!), and I think it tastes better than most commercial pizzas. Plus, we can customize our pizzas to everyone’s preferences for toppings, again saving money over the local pizza shop’s charge of $1.25 per topping (ouch!). I originally found a recipe for bread machine pizza dough at www.allrecipes.com, but I have since modified the recipe to mix it by hand when my bread machine broke! I have also adjusted the quantities to make 2 pizzas rather than one. So here is my new and improved recipe for pizza dough from scratch. Enjoy!
PIZZA DOUGH
Yield: 2 thick crust pizzas
INGREDIENTS
- 1 ½ cup flat beer (12 oz.)
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 3/4 cups all-purpose or bread flour
- 3 ¼+1/8 teaspoons yeast
DIRECTIONS
1. Mix flour, salt, sugar & yeast together in a large bowl.
2. Combine beer & melted butter, then pour over dry ingredients. Mix with rubber spatula until dough forms.
3. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place for 2 hours.
4. When ready to make pizza, preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
5. Prepare 2 pizza pans (rectangle & round work well for this quantity of dough) by brushing with olive oil and sprinkling with cornmeal. Roll or press dough to cover prepared pans.
6. Spread sauce (I like to use Contadina pizza sauce) and toppings on top of dough. Bake until crust is lightly brown and crispy on the outside, about 24 minutes.
Interesting that this recipe calls for butter instead of olive oil! I’ll have to try it sometime. We love homemade pizza, and you’re right, the results are usually so much better than commercial pizza. (For some reason Rochester, NY, a big Italian-American town, just doesn’t have great pizza places.)