Homemade Pizza
 

Well, actually calzones too. BamaVol Jr made pizzas for a living for years. When he lived at home or close by, I could count on him for pizza dough. I tried making calzones tonight and the dough was a mess, too sticky. I guess I could have tamed it with additional flour.

Does anyone else make pizza at home? I love a chunky tomato sauce, red onion, red bell pepper, feta cheese. What a great alternative to calling a chain for delivery!

Tonight's calzones (came out ugly but tasty) were sweet Italian sausage, onion & bell pepper, ricotta & mozzarella, tomatoes & basil. Salad on the side with homemade garlic dijon vinaigrette. Mmmmm.

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Not calzone but pizza yes !!

Homemade pizza is the best because you get to freestyle with toppings no one ever puts on the pizzas they sell.

My SO bought a Lonely Planet magazine a couple of months
ago which had an article with the title " In search of the perfect
Pizza". Anyway below the article was a recipe for a homemade
pizza. I tried it and it was in fact delicious. We haven't had any
pizza delivered since.

Problem with making pizza at home is the oven... difficult to get it hot enough.

I've tried multple dough recipes and I like the one from the A16 cookbook the best. ^

I've found 550 Fahrenheit on convection (as hot as my oven will go) works well in combination with a pizza stone. The key is to let the oven hold at 550 for a good 15-20 minutes before putting the pizza in, so that the stone also gets up to temperature.

this is for thin crust, using this dough recipe:

3 1/4 cups flour
1 cup hot water, with 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast and 1 tablespoon honey stirred in
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
knead in cuisinart for 1 minute with dough blade, then let rise for 75 minutes covered in dark location.

Bob

We don't usually make it quite so hot, but I would definitely agree on the pizza stone. Don't think it is possible to get the crust quite right without one.

I use to use a pizza stone on a grill when I was making it at home. Plenty hot enough for a thin crust pizza to cook crispy in a few minutes.

The dough came from a pizza place that had really good dough, they sold it in pizza sized hunks for people that were baking bread, making pizza, or frying the dough.

my wife cooks pizza on the grill. easily goes to 7-800F. she makes the dough in her Zoshoi(?) machine. she buys the flour from king arthur.

i'm totally craving pizza now!!

King Arthur makes an excellent high gluten flour for home pizza making. We have used the Tom Lehmann process for "NY Style" pizza with great success. Works indoors or on the grill. Pizza stone a must. ^

i have a gas oven that can hit 550 to 600 (verified with thermometer) ... and ive read that ideally for home pizza the higher the temp you can hit the better

i can really brown the pie but the sauce wont finish for me.... tried fresh marzanos, etc, etc... just cant do it

This is pretty much what I do except I do not have a bread machine. I also make my own pizza sauce as it is much better than any of the jar/can stuff. You are right about keeping the stone in the oven as long as possible before putting the dough on as it does make a big difference.

I used to make my own sauce as well, but the advent of two young kids has pretty much eliminated that. It's better, but my wife and I just don't have the time to make the sauce from scratch very often.

bob

We make the odd pizza at home and we love putting whatever and how much toppings we want but we still like take-out/delivery because we can replicate various crusts and even the sauce.

I'm not sure if this makes a difference but we use a bread maker to make our dough. I want to try buying dough from a baker to see if that makes any difference. Plus, the way we handle it, it only ends up being a crispy thin crust.

We never use the oven but instead lather the crust up with olive oil and then toss it onto the Weber to brown one side, take it out, top it, and then do a final bake.

We do the standard toppings of course be we had some great luck with a balsamic, caramelized onion, and goat cheese topped pizza once. We have some nice basil and tomatoes growing in the garden this year so we might have to do a Margherita.