PIZZA!!

How I love making pizza! The fun of kneading the dough and letting it rise, the creativity involved in choosing your toppings, the smell of it baking in your kitchen, and the cheese! Oh cheese, how I adore thee.

Pizza dough:

1 cup warm H20
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 package dry active yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cups of flour
1 tsp salt

Stir together the warm water, sugar, and yeast. Let this sit for about five minutes. Get your dry ingredients together. When the yeast mixture gets foamy and your apartment smells like a brewery, add the olive oil and then dump this mixture into your dry ingredients. Knead the dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Then pack it into a ball, put it into a glass bowl coated with a bit of olive oil and cover with a damp tea towel. Let it rise for an hour. Punch the dough down and knead it for about 2 more minutes. Let this sit for another ten minutes. Separate the dough into two portions (it will make two thin crust pizzas). You can even freeze one ball and thaw it when you need it again.

Sauce:
I can of diced tomatoes
two cloves garlic.
s&p

Fry the garlic lightly in oil for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 10-15 minutes, breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.

Assembly:

Preheat the oven to 450 or 500. Pull apart your dough slowly to make a thin disk. Add your toppings, then your cheese, and bake for about 15 minutes until the dough is browned and the cheese is bubbly. I like to add spinach or arugula in the last 5 minutes of cooking time.

The pizza in the picture has prosciutto, mushrooms, mozzarella, parmesan, blue cheese (very small amount). Spinach is on top. One of my favorite combos for pizza.