Pizza Day

Saturday night last weekend was pizza day for hubby and me. We made the crust (using the same recipe as before) - he wanted to knead and thought it was fun - together and we divided it up and formed and topped our own pizzas since we wanted different toppings.

Hubby's pizza had a tomato-based sauce ( tomato sauce + tomato paste and seasoned with oregano, onion powder and garlic powder). He topped it with mozzarella cheese, ham, meatball pieces (Ikea swedish meatballs), bacon, pepperoni and more mozzarella.


My pizza sauce was cream-based, I used plain creamy Alfredo sauce from a bottle. I topped mine with spinach, ham, meatball pieces, bacon and mozzarella cheese.

We dropped by the supermarket to get some fresh mushrooms but I forgot to take them out when we were preparing the pizzas.

The crust is still not as nice as I would like them to be. It's okay to eat while it is fresh out of the oven but it gets harder when it cools. Konting experiment pa and we can probably invite friends over for a make-your-own pizza dinner sometime.

Spinach Alfredo Pizza

This is the latter half of a 2 part series of blogs that chronicle our first attempt at making our own pizza at home. The first part gives detailed instructions on pizza dough preparation and can be found by clicking on this link to my Pizza Dough post.

Starting off from where my previous post left off, our pizza dough has now been rolled out and placed on a roasting pan (again, no pizza pan or baking stone yet). Note that some pizza making instructions advise that you use a pizza peel and assemble your pie on that instead.

Us ? We didn't want to go gung-ho and buy a lot of equipment that we probably won't be able to use for other dishes anyway.

Now remember this when making your own pizza, this site advises us to make sure that the toppings go on a specific order.

1. Pizza Dough
2. Sauce - for flavor and to keep the dough moist.
3. cheese - to keep the dough moist
4. toppings
5. cheese again
6. garnish, if any

Ingredients:
Classico Four Cheese Alfredo Sauce
chopped bacon
shredded ham
shredded swedish meatballs
mozzarella cheese
1 10 oz package of frozen chopped spinach

Step 1: Pour some sauce over your rolled dough and spread it around. Sprinkle a layer of mozzarella cheese over the sauce.

Step 2: Arrange your toppings across your pie. For our pizza, we drained & squeezed the water out of the package of chopped spinach before paying it out here. The topped it with meat.

I half-cooked the bacon in a pan before arranging them on my pie. I wanted to get rid of some of the fat and I also wasn't so sure about putting in raw ingredients since I didn't know how long I was going to bake the pizza before the crust gets cooked.

The Swedish meatballs were the packaged ones from Ikea, I wrapped them up in foil, thawed them in the toaster oven and pulled the balls apart so I could spread them across the pizza.

I also threw in some leftover ham for good measure.

Step 3: Before popping it into the oven, sprinkle another layer of mozzarella cheese over your pizza toppings.

Now, this is where the instructions vary. Some recipes ask that you bake your pizza in the oven at 400 to 450 F for 20 to 25 minutes. Some say to bake them at 475 F for 10 to 13 minutes.

I decided to set the oven at 425 F and it took 25 minutes for my pizza to get done. Make sure that you watch the sides of your dough, once it starts to brown, that's a sign that your pie is ready.



Verdict: yummy! Ang galing.

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.