Pizza Dough

Hubby loves pizza. Unfortunately, since most pizza have sauces that are tomato-based, I don't care much for it at all. The only one that I've ever really loved is Papa John's Spinach Alfredo pizza. The thing is, we both love our toppings so our pizza gets pretty expensive.

Recently, one of my very best friends from high school told me about how she prepared pizza for her husband one night. Masarap raw and I got inspired to do the same. Sayang lang, I had already gotten the ingredients to make my pizza dough and she didn't tell me until later that Betty Crocker had an instant pizza dough mix.

Anyway, it was fun making my own pizza and with the step by step and visuals provided in this Easy Pizza Dough Recipe, it was very easy. I would definitely do this again.

Ingredients:
1 cup of warm water (105 F)
3.5 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp honey
1 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast

Step 1: Add 1 tsp salt and 2 tsp honey to the warm water. Add the yeast, mix, and let it stand in room temperature for 10 minutes. I watched this mixture the entire time and was happy to see bubbles forming, this is an indication that the yeast is still alive.

Do not use scalding or hot water as this would kill the yeast.

Step 2: After 10 minutes, gradually add the 3.5 cups of flour and 2 tbsp olive oil and mix with a wooden spoon. I couldn't find a wooden spoon and had to settle for the matching wooden fork instead. Surprisingly, I hadn't turned the wooden spoon (fork) more than 3 or 4 times around the bowl and my dough already looked like this.


Step 3: At this point, I sprinkled flour over my work surface and started kneading the dough. I had to log on to the internet again and google "kneading" because I didn't know what I needed to do.

Anyway, at this point knead the dough until it is elastic and smooth, as pictured on the left.

Step 4: Form the dough into a ball, coat it with olive oil. Place it into a bown and cover with plastic wrap. Let this stand for an hour in room temperature to let it rise, making sure that there are no drafts. After an hour, the dough will have risen to about double its size. Punch or press the dough down, this will release some air, and cover it again with the plastic wrap and let stand for another hour.

Step 5: You can now start rolling out your dough to the desired shape. I don't have a rolling pin in my kitchen so I improvised using a dowel rod that I got from a disassembled paper towel holder.

Using a rolling pin will ensure that your crust has a uniform thickness.

We had to cook our pizza in a roasting pan since we have not bought ourselves a pizza pan or a baking stone yet.