We enjoy the homemade pizza I make, but since Ira’s birth I haven’t made it very often because Chitter nurses him and he has several food allergies including wheat and dairy.
The pediatrician said he would likely out grow them by the time he was a year old and it seems like that has happened…or at least we’re hopeful it has.
The doctor instructed Chitter to begin testing him by eating a little wheat, dairy, or eggs to see how he reacted once he reached six months old. Each time she tried it was obvious he was not over the allergies until very recently.
For the last two weeks he has done well with the small tests.
I’ve been telling her whenever she’s ready I’d make homemade pizza. Over the weekend she said lets try it! Once the pizza was made she said it was the best thing she’d ever eaten 🙂 I know that was just because she hasn’t had one in so long.
I’ve always liked pizza and made various recipes over the years, but it was only after I started making my crust with yeast that I became truly satisfied.
My crust recipe is super simple.
For one pizza crust
- 1 teaspoon yeast
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup hot water
- 1 1/2 cup to 1 3/4 cup flour (I usually use bread flour, but if I’m out I use all-purpose flour)
- additional flour needed for kneading and rolling crust out
I use a stand mixer to make the dough, but you could use a regular mixer or even do it by hand.
Mix yeast, sugar, and water together and let sit for 5 minutes.
Add salt and slowly start mixing in flour. Using a mixer really makes this part easy.
Over the years I’ve figured out the texture of crust we like the best. If the dough is a little wet when you take it from the mixer, the crust has a lighter texture. If you let the dough completely form in the mixer until it’s ready to rise the crust will have a chewier texture, more like a deep dish or pan pizza.
We like the lighter crust, so I only use 1 1/2 cup of flour and remove dough from the mixer while it’s still a little wet. I knead the extra flour needed into the crust on a cutting board. It doesn’t take much more flour, maybe few tablespoons.
The dough needs to rise in a covered greased bowl in a warm place for about an hour.
Another thing that brought my pizza making skills to another level is using a pizza stone. I put the stone in a cold oven and set the temperature to bake at 500 degrees. When the oven comes to temperature I carefully take out the heated stone and place the rolled out crust on it and add sauce and toppings.
Once the stone has been carefully placed back in the oven it takes about 10 minutes to cook a dandy pizza.
Last night’s video: Before and After Recent Flooding.
Tipper
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Hi Tipper. Nanette is right about refrigerating the dough. My one son started making pizza dough years ago. He uses a recipe that makes 2 large sizes and separates them. He ages 2 or 3 days in between. The dough gets better each time. He also makes sourdough, ageing again. I wrote to Katie’s post last night about my milk allergies when I was born. Back in 1955 in Canada the doctor didn’t believe in nursing babies. I drank goat milk. I still like it. I must have gotten over the allergy quickly. I have always been a milk drinker and massive cheese eater. Wheat slightly irritates me the last few years. I never had pizza growing up. I must have been an older teenager when my mom bought a cardboard pizza from the store. When I was 18 I bought a real pizza. That’s when my love for cheese started. Great news about Katie and Ira. Anna from Arkansas.
Tipper, do you make your own pizza sauce? Or what brand do you use?
Going to look into a pizza stone.
Thanks so much!
Pizza is one of my favorites as well.
Now I’m really hungry!
CC, I use the brand Classico 🙂
Tipper – I don’t know where my mind went this morning with my comment about Ira’s birthday!! I know it has come and passed. I think my bag of marbles has a hole in it and so I have lost a few…at my age that can happen…ha ha Sorry for the error.
Wanita-no worries 🙂 Thank you!
We love pizza at our house too. Hubby and I love Pizza Hut pan pizza with jalapeños, but homemade pizzas are so great too. Actually, I am sure they are much better for you because we can use good olive oil and homemade or organic tomato sauce. My sister uses our Mama’s dinner roll recipe to make her homemade pizzas. Since the first time she tried it, her family has never ordered a pizza for delivery again. I am going to try your recipe, Tipper. It sounds delicious. Pizza may be super good for tomorrow—but for this evening, I am making ramps with fried potatoes and deer steak on the grill. A sweet friend of my hubby’s gave us a bag full the other day and he has been waiting on me to make them—Smells so good.
I was a teenager before I ever tasted pizza. The first Italian restaurant opened in Raleigh in the mid-50s. It didn’t really take off like the first one would today. The place was called Gino’s, and to this day it was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten (and I’ve eaten pizza all over the US and parts of Europe and Canada). Gino’s operated in different places all over the area. Their pizza remained consistent in taste. I’d love to know what their recipe was and where they got their ingredients. Their pepperoni was unlike any I’ve tasted elsewhere, and far better.
Happy to hear Ira is doing well after the small test. Also glad Katie got some pizza!! I know it’s been hard on her.
Continue to pray for our family. Time in this world is slipping away.
So happy to hear that little Ira is getting better and I know Katie was thrilled to get to eat some pizza!! We like pizza here and we prefer a thinner crust also.
To be honest, I started making homemade pizza because I kept baking the cardboard disc that come on the bottom of some frozen kinds. I couldn’t tell the difference until I started trying to slice it. Needless to say it was a little tough!
I’ve made homemade pizza for years. Sometimes pizza kits and sometimes pizza crust mix and bottled sauce. Always with sauce, pepperoni, onions and cheese for toppings. I’ve recently started making my own crust with yeast. Groceries are so high I try to save anyway I can and this is cheaper and better. My recipe is the same as yours but I will use your hint about how you make your crust. Plan on making this week for sure! Thank you for all your recipes.
Pizza! That has to be the most versatile food for making…so many topping to choose from….but like you I am pretty ‘boring’ too…the very basics as i mostly like the crust, sauce and cheese…gotta have that cheese! I will be trying your recipe Tipper – thanks for sharing it again. What a blessing for Katie..and Ira…that he is outgrowing his allergies enabling her to have more choices in her diet! I believe she mentioned he will be a year old shortly…oh my, how time has flown! Hugs & blessings from Victoria, Canada.
A pizza stone is the way to go to get the crispy crust. I use my kitchen shears to cut it too. They do a better job than a pizza cutter.
I’ve never made pizza but I sure may try your recipe.
Thanks for the walk up in the woods following the stream when flowing fast from heavy rain and back in it’s bank. I absolutely LOVE a creek and have traipsed behind my Daddy as a little girl following a creek so many times. At the old place, down in NE MS, the creek has a white sand bottom not like your rock filled creek. Growing up in N Ill, I saw more black dirt creeks and the shore of Lake Michigan was all filled with small rocks. Those white sand creeks in NE MS are still the most beautiful creeks to me.
I laughed out loud when Matt said if there were a lot of people around offering help, a talking to him, he would forget how he was going to do the job:) I’m sorta like that, like to hoe my own row:)
I’ve never made my crust, but have made pizzas with store bought crust (Pilsbury). A pizza stone sure makes a difference for a crispier crust! So glad to hear that Ira is “out growing” some, if not all, of those allergies! I know that eveyone, especially Katie, is happy and grateful for that.
Hey Tipper, sounds like great pizza. Here’s a tip , if you make the dough the night before, let it rise for an hour and then put it in the fridge in an airtight container ( or a bowl inside a plastic bag) the flavor will really improve as the dough ferments slightly. This is really good for a wet dough and makes it easier to stretch out while it’s cold. You are on to something with the wet dough. A few years ago I built a wood fired oven at my house. You are welcome to come over and make pizza and bread with me sometime if you like.
Nanette-thank you! I will try that 🙂
I have never made home made pizza but have seen your video. I might try it some day. Funny story, My mom never learned to drive and my dad always worked two jobs so when my sister took mom to the supermarket the rest of us were told that after we cleaned the house we could go to the neighborhood store (which had a limited food like a gas station), and buy a chef borardee box pizza to make and eat. My brother convinced me to make the pizza first and then clean. Once I had made the pizza and eaten it he said he would clean his room first. That rascal bolted out his window leaving me and my two little sisters to clean the whole house! By the way, we thought the pizza was so good cause we didn’t have a pizza place near us and didn’t know any better lol.
Linda-thank you for sharing that story! When I was pregnant with the girls I didn’t have hardly any cravings because I was sick but the one thing was those chef borardee boxed pizzas 🙂
It’s good to read that Ira seems to be outgrowing his food allergies. Your homemade pizza sounds delicious. I love a good pizza.
When I was a child my Granny would make homemade pizza, but that’s all I’ve ever had homemade. I love pizza. I need to try your recipe.
Great that you have gotten homemade pizza down. I would think there are not a lot of people. who can do it. Now all you need is a brick oven heated by wood! I discovered some years ago there are pizza trucker vendors that actually use woods fired ovens. I would like to try one of those but have not ever been where one was operating. Wonder if there is one anywhere in the north GA and western NC area.
One more thing, since I have to cook for one I would divide that dough, let one half rise and put the other in the refrigerator or freezer for another day.
You use hot water? I use water just above body temperature, you can stick your finger in it and it’s comfortably warm, maybe 110º. I thought hot water would kill the yeast. Otherwise my recipe is the same.
I have a pizza stone but I use a modified 12″ cast iron skillet most of the time. I start with a cold pan and let the crust rise a little again before I start adding toppings.
Ed-I do 🙂 Maybe my hot water isn’t very hot
what do you put on your pizza?
Elithea, we are pretty boring, only pepperoni and cheese and sauce 🙂
linsey woolsey is a type of homespun cloth woven from linen and wool. i took a class at the folk school where we were supposed to make some, but i ended up just making an all wool sample (spun, dyed, and woven.). melissa weaver dunning would know more, though, or martha?
Elithea-thank you!
I made homemade pizza for my daughter’s birthday celebration yesterday. It was very similar to your, except I started adding two teaspoons of garlic powder and Italian seasoning to the dough. It was so good.
Happy to hear little Ira is tolerating the tests regarding his diet. I like the lighter pizza crust too. For me it the thick crust kind of overshadows the toppings which are the star of the show.
We have homemade pizza here and about half the time I make the crust and the other half I use naan bread as the crust, which is super good in our opinion. We had homemade pizza last week and it was really good with just mushrooms, meatballs, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.
Thank you for your recipe!
praise God for a little IRA
Praying little Ira gets past this gluten intolerance. But it certainly sounds like he’s getting better overcoming it. Diabetics also have to be careful with wheat products as they are high in carbs. Sounds like a marvelous pizza. Wish I had just one tiny slice. Ha! Ha!
I like to eat pizza every now and then, especially the one I know as a supreme. I don’t think I have ever ate a “homemade’ pizza. I have often wrote about only eating what we grew at home and buying very little at a grocery store and never buying anything at a restaurant when I was growing up, I was 16-17 years old before ever eating or knowing what pizza was. I had managed to get up a couple of dollars and rode with my best friend to a football game at our high school. The booster club was selling slices of pizza after the game. You had two choices, pepperoni or cheese, I bought cheese because I thought pepperoni might be hot pepper, I didn’t know what it was.
good morning Randy Randy, I didn’t know what pizza was till I went home with somebody else from school, it was good I ate a lot of it, and it made me very sick, I threw up in the floor at my friend’s house, God bless you Randy have a great day
Good to hear from you. A long with pizza, I never ate spaghetti, lasagna, just a few hamburgers, steak and similar things until I was 18 years old and had began to get out on my own. Growing up hot dogs was the food we ate for special occasions. Like you I have ate so much of something until I made my self sick. I did this one time with green beans and another time with fresh hog liver. I got my taste back for green beans, but will not even use liver for catfish bait. My stomach will still do a flip flop if I see fresh uncooked liver in a grocery store.
We did not have pizza at home when I was a child. But my 16th birthday was celebrated at Pizza Hut with girlfriends and my parents enjoyed it with us!!!
Randy- odd question perhaps but what is your wife’s favorite flower? I would like to grow it if I can in her memory.
Randy, I had never heard of pizza until a girlfriend suggested we make a “Pizza Pie”. Your comment about never going to a restaurant also triggered a memory. I was in eighth grade and went to a 4 H rally with a friend. We went to a restaurant for lunch. The waitress asked what I wanted to eat and I responded, “At home I usually eat beans and taters with cornbread.” That’s what she brought me.