Lessons of a Housewife: Pizza Dough

I graduated from nursing school August 5th 2011. After 11 months of non stop school I am finally free to spend time with my family and working on my home before beginning a career in nursing. I started by learning how to make many different things. The first thing I changed over was our pizza dough. Yes, pizza dough. It's actually very easy to make. I love to pre-bake it and freeze the dough for future use so I do not have to make dough all the time. I also make mini dough for my daughter's lunch. This is a very simple recipe:

You will need:
An electric mixer with a dough hook (or you can knead it yourself)
3 cups of all purpose flour or whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup cool water
3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp active dry yeast (this is one packet)
2 tbsp olive oil

How to make it:
In a medium sized bowl or your mixer's bowl add 1/4 cool water, 1 tsp sugar and 1 packet of active dry yeast. Mix until yeast is dissolved and let sit for 10 minutes until foamy.
Add 3 cups of flour, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp salt,  1 1/2 tsp sugar and 3/4 cool water. You can put the dough hook on and beat on low speed for about 5 minutes or until mixture is smooth and elastic. If the dough is too sticky or not wet enough you can add more flour or water but at very small increments.
Lightly grease another medium sized bowl, place dough in bowl and rotate around to coat. Cover with a moist towel and let sit for 30 minutes.
The dough will almost double in size. Punch down. Lightly grease two plates, cut dough in half and turn to coat on plate. Cover dough with saran wrap and let rise in the refrigerator for 2 more hours.

If you would like smaller thicker pizza you can make the dough after the first 30 minute rise. It is harder to roll out as it is still very elastic and will like to shrink back small.

After the two hours lightly grease a pizza pan, preheat oven to 475 roll dough out and bake for 3 minutes until crust is puffy, add toppings cook for another 6 minutes and done = ]

Sometimes I like to make the pizza a little special by adding 5 cheesesticks around the edges, folding over and pressing down with a fork. This makes yummy stuffed crust. Before you put this in the oven brush crusts with light olive oil bake for three minutes, add toppings and coat crusts again with 1 clove fresh garlic and melted butter. Bake for 6 minutes and you will have a yummy pizza.

This recipe can also be frozen for future use. I like to use a glass pyrex baking dish lined with parchment paper between each layer. Roll dough out on a greased cookie sheet bake for three minutes, let cool and then freeze. It's that simple. You will have to increase your bake time to 10 minutes when preparing the pizza at a later time but this makes pizza time much faster. Did I mention better than order out. You can add any combinations of toppings that you can imagine. This is a great dough recipe. Enjoy!

May God Bless You and Keep You,
Jessica