Grace and Grandpat's Pizza From Scratch

Homemade pizza ready for the oven.

While the rest of the family went to the UNC-Virginia Tech Football game (UNC won--go Tarheels)  today, Grace and I stayed home and made a vegetarian pizza from scratch---crust included. I must admit this is the first time I have ever made pizza dough from scratch.

Here's the recipe we used for the pizza dough:
1 (1/4 ounce) package yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon olive oil
2.5 cups bread flour

Directions:
1.  Mix yeast in warm water until dissolved.
2.  Stir in oil and flour until it forms a dough ball.
3.  Cover bowl with a kitchen towel, place in a warm place.
4.  Let rise for 15 minutes.
5.  Punch down and wrap in Saran wrap and refrigerate for as much as 8 hours. We refrigerated for about an hour.
6.  Remove from fridge, warm up and let rise.
7.  Spread in pizza pan or on baking stone. We used a 12" pizza pan that we bought at Williams-Sonoma.
8.  Add favorite toppings.

This makes enough for 2-12" thin crusts.  I saved half of the dough to make another pizza (the dough will keep in the fridge for 3 days).

Grace spreads dough in the pizza pan.

Oiling your hands with a bit of olive oil makes spreading the dough easier.

We had earlier made our own tomato sauce using a can of diced tomatoes to which we added fresh basil and garlic.  We cooked this down until it became thick.

Spreading the tomato sauce.

For toppings we sauteed onions and mushrooms.

Mushrooms and onions provide topping.

 And of course we added cheese, in this case shredded cheddar.

Grace adds the shredded cheddar cheese.

Into the oven for 15 minutes at 475 degrees.

 We baked it in a preheated 475 degree oven for about 15 minutes until browned.

Bobby B was here so the three of us finished off the pizza (we did save one piece for Dan).  We were so eager to try the pizza that we forgot to take a photo of the finished product. It was a good pizza!!!  And we had fun making it.