pizza pizza!

This week we've been attempting italian themed meals!  After our risotto disaster last night, I was hoping for a bit of redemption tonight with homemade pizzas.

This was my first time using a pizza stone and it definitely won't be my last! I read through several tutorials on how to get the best result out of your pizza stone.  The stone made the crust very crispy, a type of crispy that I've never been able to get out of a regular pizza pan. Here's the dough recipe I used:

White Pizza Dough Recipe:
1 packet of active dry yeast
1 cup of warm water
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 cup cornmeal

Directions: Mix yeast and warm water.  Let stand until yeast dissolves (approximately 5-10 mins).  Mix flour, salt, olive oil and yeast mixture together until the mixture forms a sticky ball that has pulled away from the side of the bowl.  Add more flour if needed.  Let rise in a well oiled bowl for 30 mins (cover with a towel).  Punch down and separate into two balls.  At this point, you can either store the pizza dough in a container or roll it out into two 12 inch pizzas.  Since the dough was for tonight, I placed the pizza stone in a cold oven to warm up to 400 degrees.

While the dough was rising, I chopped up a few toppings.  Tonight, I picked tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, basil (picked from our patio garden), parm and mozzarella cheese!  Chris added some pepperoni to his pizza too.

When the stone is hot, take it out of the oven and add a nice dusting of cornmeal. This is a critical step!  It keeps the dough from sticking to the stone.  After I rolled out the dough, I placed it on the steaming hot stone.  Because I prefer pizzas with no tomato sauce, I first added a light layer of olive oil followed by the toppings.

Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 10 mins and then broil 2 minutes just to give it that perfect golden brown color.

Great texture in the dough and great toppings = great pizza!