Mmmm. . . Pizza

After this weekend's cold weather camping trip, I was ready for some simple, comforting food.  So what better than an american-style pizza dinner with some friends?  This is just your normal, hand tossed pizza.  This pizza featured both red and yellow bell peppers, and sliced mushrooms.  the cheese was an Amish made yogurt cheese that our local food co-op gets, and the sauce was just a basic tomato pizza sauce.  

However, what really makes a pizza, if you ask me, is the crust.  I used the same dough for both pizzas and the bread sticks, which made for a lot less work.  

For 3 large pizzas (or two large pizzas and 12 bread sticks, as was the case here), I start with two and a quarter cups of warm water: I just use the hottest water my tap will produce.  My general rule, for the thickness i like pizzas (a normal hand-tossed pizza) is 3/4 cup of water per pizza, and then i base all other measurements off of that.  I proofed about a tablespoon of yeast in with the warm water, with maybe two teaspoons of sugar.  

When the yeast looks to be fairly alive, I add in several cups of flour, which I've mixed with a bit less than a tablespoon of salt, and stir it up.  Generally I start by only adding a few cups of flour, so I get a very wet dough, or batter even,  then I add in some stuff to jazz it up.  This time I put in maybe three or four cloves of garlic, which I had crushed and minced, along with a couple tablespoons of dry crushed oregano and about a tablespoon of basil (I didn't really measure that at all, but if i had to guess, I'd guess about that amount).  And finally I put in a healthy dose of Olive Oil.  

From here I put in more flour until it's the consistency I want for kneading, and knead for about ten minutes, (or until the dough has developed a good amount of elasticity or resilience) adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking too bad.   I then coat it with more olive oil, and let it rise till doubled, about an hour.  

After the dough has risen, I punch it down and knead it a few times to get out any large bubbles, and separate it into three equal size balls, two of which I'll use for pizzas, and one for the bread sticks.  

For the pizzas, I flatten them with my hand a bit, and then I actually do toss them.  To do so, drape the pizza dough over both hands, so it's resting on your knuckles (not with your hand in a fist, use the middle segment of fingers), and just gently toss the dough up and with a slight rotation, catching the dough on your knuckles too.  I've seen an Italian chef doing this, and he claimed that in reality, this is more to get excess flour off of the dough, tha

n it is to make the dough expand to the right size.  But it does expand some, and it makes the dough thicker on the outside than in the middle (one thing i never do, is get out a rolling pin when making pizza).  Honestly though, mostly the dough tossing is just to impress your friends who are always hanging out in your kitchen, yet for some reason never helping to prepare the meal.  After tossing i still have to resize the dough when it's laid out on the pan, to make it fit.  I take the dough and pinch it up a little bit around the edge, making a nice ring,  it makes a nice crust when it rises and helps me keep an even edge for the toppings and sauce.  

And that's it.  Add your toppings and throw it in an oven between 400 and 450 degrees, (depending on the style of pizza and the toppings) and you've got an amazing pizza.  For the bread sticks I just divided them into 12 equal (more or less) pieces and rolled them with my hands into "sticks", let it rise while you're preparing the pizzas, I sprinkled a little cheese over the bread sticks after they had risen.  Then put it in the oven at the same time as your pizza, the bread sticks will be done just a bit before the pizzas, so pull them out and serve them with your left over pizza sauce (I always make too much pizza sauce).  

And there you have it.  It tastes a lot better than calling domino's or papa john's, and costs a lot less too.