We have a meal schedule in our house. Every day of the week has a different theme. Mondays - Mexican, Tuesday - Italian/Indian, Wednesday - traditional, Thursdays - Eat Out, Fridays - Pizza, Saturday - Finger Foods/Left overs, Sunday - Boo cooks. This is the system that helps us plan our meals out and helps us keep a variety going through our diet. Seriously, when we didn't adhere to this routine we either: 1.) ate out every night (eek!), or 2.) ate the same thing every night. Seriously, we would have various meals of the same thing and that can't be good for the budding food enthusiast that was my son. I mention "was," as my son has given up eating at this time. So any help in getting him to eat more than chicken nuggets, french fries and yogurt would be much appreciative. Friday was finger food Fridays, but we decided that pizza would be more fun. I got the idea from Lara who does Pizza night as well. Hopefully she will show us how she does it. As they get older Mac and Mya would be able to help make it and choose what we should have. However, now its usually just me unless pepperonis are involved. Mac will volunteer to help eat those before putting them on the pizza.
But I digress. Pizza! The worlds most perfect easy meal. I love it. I never thought I would be making my own this frequently but I have been tweaking this recipe for over a month now and just love it. I have fallen in love with my bread machine, and have been a bread making fool these past few weeks as well, but that's a whole other story.
So follow me: Let me walk you through my way of making pizza.
Ingredients:
Dough-
3 cups of flour, 3 tsp of yeast, dash of salt, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of oil and 1 cup hot water.
Toppings-
1 jar/can of pizza sauce, 1-2 bags of Italian/mozzarella cheese, whatever else you like. Today we have sausage, red pepper, and onion.
The bread machine is a masterpiece for bread making. It takes all the time consumption that bread/dough needs and puts it in a machine that does it all. The rising, the kneading and all that
hands on stuff is no longer necessary. So you can throw your ingredients in and leave it to do its job while you do whatever you like, whether its cleaning, watching a movie, playing with the kids, taking a nap, eating some chocolate, or whatever else you would like to do. The possibilities are endless.
Here is my beautiful bread machine:
Now that i have my beauty out and ready to rumble, I need to go gather my ingredients. First I will start by going and getting 3 cups of bread flour. All-purpose flour works nicely, but it just so happens that I have 50 pounds of bread flour in my pantry so I will use that...
What? You think I am kidding? Nope! My neurotic self actually has 50 lbs of bread flour in her pantry. I kid you not. Here it is:
That bag of flour ways more than my two kids combined...seriously. I'm neurotic and it seemed like a great idea at the time to buy it. It only cost me 14 bucks and do you know how much bread I can make with that??? WOOT!Back to the recipe. While you are getting your flour, turn you faucet on to hot. Let it run for a bit and get good and steamy. You want that hot water to activate your yeast so your bread will rise.
Once you have gotten all your ingredients together, add them to your bread machine with the liquids first. I usually do water, oil, sugar, salt, flour, and then yeast. Most definitely your yeast should be the last thing you put in. Let it nest in a comfy little flour bed so it can relax before we really put it to work.
What I really like about my bread machine, is that it is something my son can help me do. Its so easy, plus he loves pushing the buttons to make it start. He also has to make sure that I put everything in properly and its up to his code. You don't want to cross the Bubbee...he will get ya.
Now, turn your bread machine to the dough setting and go have a little fun!! You have an hour and 10 minutes to do whatever you like until you need to focus on your pizza again!!.....
Now its time to focus on your meal again. While your dough is wrapping up, its time to prep the toppings for your pizza. Tonight we are having sausage with peppers and onion. Yum. I totally forgot to take any pictures of me using my new frying pan to fry this sausage. But lets just say she worked maaaahhhvously! Hopefully I can introduce you all to her next time. Plus if you don't like cutting veg (I don't), and your husband happens to get home before you have popped this baby in the oven, casually ask him to cut the onion. Tell him you have cried enough today, since your 7 month old started a new way of communication which involves shrieking to her hearts content anytime you are holding her, looking at her, or just being around her. Seriously, its unnerving as she is shrieking like I did in labor with her. It doesn't do my eardrums any good, and it does my nerves even worse. So let your husband do that part while you go sit with your reclining chair and use your back massage pad.
When he is finished you should have a beautiful pile of veg to throw on that pizza when the dough is ready.
No pizza should go without these two wonderful vegetables. Seriously. It would just be wrong.I also had totally meant to show you how I knead my dough. But alas, I was just so hungry I forgot and threw the pizza together. But here is a walk through.
When your timer for your bread machine goes off, you will notice your bread has risen significantly. Beat that sucker down to a manageable level and pull it out. Its a huge hunk of dough, and if you have a normal size pizza stone like I do, I would rip about a 1/4 of it off to make either a small personal pizza, or make some rolls. The dough will spread while cooking, I noticed that it always overflows my pizza stone, making it hard to cut. So unless you are using a cookie sheet or a larger stone, this may be too much for you. However, I just throw all caution to the wind and pop my hands in flour and spread her on my stone. I never minded a little overhang. Layer those toppings on anyway you like and you will soon come up with a beautiful yummy pizza creation ready for the oven.
Ah yes, my love. Soon you will be toasty and brown with gooey cheese and a sweet delectable crust. My oven (that was preheated to 400 F) awaits this pie and will bake her for 20 minutes.
Which leaves you with a totally indulging could eat the whole pie pizza that will have you coming back each week.
Notice how you no longer see my pizza stone. LOL. She really did expand. YUM.Better than Fazzoli's Bread Recipe (thanks to my sisters roommate Brenda):
modified by me for the bread machine.
Ingredients:
1 cup of hot water
1/2 cup of oil
1/4 cup of sugar
dash of salt
3 cups of flour
3 tsp of yeast
Place ingredients in the bread machine pan in order given. Make a little divot for the yeast in the flour. Set to dough cycle. Relax and enjoy the 1 and 20 minutes of freedom this wonderful machine gives us!
Jennie B
