BYOP: Build Your Own Pizza

Enjoying Pizza in a restaurant is one thing, but making your own pizza is a skill that all Pizza Boys and Pizza Girls should have. After putting in some hard work in the kitchen, there’s nothing more rewarding  than opening up the oven and seeing your cheesy, melty, crispy golden brown masterpiece smiling back at your beautiful face. Being new to the home made pizza game myself, I’m going to be walking you through my journey to becoming a master chef, and giving you tips and tricks to avoid the mistakes I’m inevitably going to make. Let’s get sweaty.

The first recipe I attempted came from Food Network Magazine’s list of “50 Easy Pizzas”. Naturally, I picked the first one on the list because I’m a winner.

Reference

Before we start, you’re going to want to set aside some time to make this. The dough takes about an hour and a half to rise, so don’t start making this pizza right before you want to eat like I did.

Margherita Pizza

The Dough

Ingredients:

3 ¾ cups flour

1 ½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1 packet of yeast

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 ⅓ cups warm water

*yields 2 individual sized pizzas

Directions

1. Put the flour and the salt in a nice large bowl and whisk them together. This part feels a little silly, but just roll with it. The first time I did this, I packed the flour down in the cup, which turns out is bad, you get way too much flour and your pizza ends up tasting like George Washingtons wig.
2. Make a well and add in your warm water, sugar, and your yeast packet. It’s like a little pool for them to swim in and become friends.
3. Wait for it to get nice and foamy. You want that yeast to get a chance to play before you force it to grow up and become a pizza.
4. Once it’s foamy, add your olive oil.
5. Knead until smooth. You finally get to touch it. Fondle it. Run it through your fingers. If you’re making it for yourself and only yourself, you are allowed to kiss it.
6. If the dough is still all wet and gross, add some flour until that dough act right. You want it to be a little sticky, but not quite slimy.
7. Brush it with olive oil once you’re ready to let it rise.
8. Cover the bowl and let it rise until it has doubled in size. This should take about an hour and a half. You can use this time to look at pictures of cute cats on the internet.
9. Once its huge, divide into 2 equal portions.
10. Stretch the pizza until you have a nice circular shape about 9 inches in diameter.

So that’s it for the dough, from here you can top it with whatever you want. If you’re lazy, you can just buy pizza or pasta sauce from the store and spread that on there. Slap some mozzarella cheese and pepperonis on there and call it a day. Otherwise, keep reading.

Go ahead and start preheating your oven to 500 degrees

Toppings

½ lb diced mozzarella (I opted for shredded because I already had some in the fridge)

½ cup crushed San Marzano tomatoes

dried oregano

salt

pepper

olive oil

torn basil

1. Spread the crushed tomatoes evenly across the pizza. Make sure you leave enough room for the crust so you have something to grip.
2. Throw the salt, pepper and olive oil on there and throw it in the oven.  

*We’re gonna wait to put the cheese and basil on

Baking

1. Put the pizza on a pizza stone or inverted baking sheet on the lowest oven rack.
2. Wait until the dough is a golden, which should be about 15 minutes.
3. Pull the pizza out and top with mozzarella cheese and torn basil
4. Place back in the oven until cheese melts
5. Drizzle with olive oil, because you’re fancy.

Ohhhh ho ho ho, this pizza is looking too nice. If you’re the hipster type, go ahead and grab an instagram or snap a chat of that thing. Watch your filter though, you don’t want to ruin that perfect golden brown you worked so hard to achieve.

Let us know how it goes in the comments below! Or if you guy’s have any recipes that you really like, send it our way and we’ll feature it here on Pizza Boy!