Pizza using Basic Bread Recipe

 

This blog entry follows the video on making homemade pizza. 

Begin by making the basic white bread dough: 

About a tablespoon of yeast proofed in about 2 cups of warm water, a couple "squirts" of agave, a bit of gluten, and a bit of white yeast.  When you've verified this yeast is waking up (bubbling), proceed: 

Add more white flour, a scrambled egg if you'd like, some salt sprinklings, and stir, adding flour until it's solid enough to knead.  Then turn the dough out onto a  horizontal surface to knead until elastic and ready. (More complete directions included in the Basic White Bread recipe)

Pinch off about a quarter of the total dough and place in an oiled (I use olive oil) cast iron skillet.  Spread out the dough to fit the bottom of the pan. Be patient with the dough; you'll only be able to spread it a little bit at a time.  This gives you an opportunity to split your time between spreading the dough and cleaning up the kitchen. (In the video, you may catch a glimpse of the vacuum cleaner behind me, too!).  The remainder of the dough you can place into a prepared bread pan to rise or you can use on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper to make another pizza. 

How you let this rise depends on your timing. If you want pizza for dinner on Tuesday and it's Monday evening, you can cover the skillet with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until 45 minutes before dinner time.  If it's Tuesday morning, you can do the same.  If it's a couple hours before dinner time, you can place the uncovered skillet into an un-headed oven with a bowl of warm water. 

When the dough is done rising, cover the pan with shredded mozzarella.  Gramps likes it with a little cheddar mixed with the mozzarella; I've also received rave reviews after adding gouda cheese. Place (don't spread) tomato sauce and whatever fixings you'd like on top.  You could also use pesto instead of tomato sauce.  In the video, I use half tomato and half pesto.  For fixings in the video, I added diced onion fried in butter, feta cheese, pepperoni on half, and chopped artichoke hearts on the other half. Cover all fixings and sauce with another thin layer of mozzarella cheese.  

Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F. Remove from oven. When it's done sizzling (but it's still hot), slip the pizza from the pan into a cutting board (if you wait too long, the pizza won't slip so easily out of the pan.)  Cool a little more before you cut the pizza into slices. 

Other ideas for kinds of pizzas: 

Hawaiian: Pineapple chunks and ham. 

Veggie: Anything goes; you'll want to cook some veggies in advance, especially mushrooms and spinach because they release water when they cook.  

Greek: Olives (I like kalamata), feta cheese, artichoke hearts.