Sunday, July 29, 2007

This pizza was made like this:
crust
1 pkg yeast (I used quick-rise) or regular
1 cup very warm (but not too warm) water
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil (Bertolli)
2 1/2 plus almost 1 cups flour

dissolve yeast in 1 cup very warm water (can do this in mixer bowl)... wait 5 min. for yeast to dissolve. add a good squirt of honey, a little salt, some olive oil, and 2 and a half cups flour. If you have a mixer, mix with dough hook for a minute or so (I use power setting 2 at all times). Add another cup (a little less than that really) a little at a time over the next minute or so, with mixer running. Once the dough starts to really look like pizza dough, let the dough hook knead the dough for 2 minutes. If mixing by hand, you'll have to knead the dough for about 5 minutes I think. When dough is finished kneading, drizzle more olive oil on top and turn to coat. Place (or leave) in bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and put in a warm place for a half hour to one and a half hours (depending on how patient you are). Dough should rise nicely-- unless your water was too hot! I let the dough rise in the oven that I have preheated for a minute then turned off.

I use shortening to grease my pizza pans. Split the dough into 2 balls. Stretch and pull dough so you have a bigger, flatter circle, and press into pans. No need to pre-bake crust-- I make it pretty thin.

toppings
you can top with anything you want (except cucumber-- you can't put cucumber on a pizza!) but in the pizza that is pictured, here's what I did:
spread with Cascone's pizza sauce
sprinkle with 2 cups mozzarella cheese
sprinkle with 1/2 cup Provel cheese (this is the famous St. Louis cheese)
top with green bell peppers, pimento peppers, red bell peppers (from the garden).
top with an entire bunch of green onion, chopped up
top half with leftover bacon from the morning, half with pepperoni.

bake in 440 degree oven, on lower rack, for 12 minutes. Move to top rack and broil for 2 minutes or so, watching closely. This will bubble up and brown the cheese, and make the pepperoni crispy.

sprinkle with Parmesan and wash down with a cold beverage like bud light (for those older than 21 years of age).

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