One of my favourite things to do is to make pizza from scratch with friends and family. I really enjoy the experience of making the pizza as much as I do eating it. Tonight I'm having a few friends over for pizza, so last night I whipped up a batch of dough in my breadmaker. Over the years I've tried numerous recipes, and I thought I would share with you my own personal recipe that I've perfected through trial and error.
Chas' Pizza Dough
41/2 cups flour
11/3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
13/4 water (ice cold)
2 tbsp. honey
rosemary (or any other dried herb you want to add)
Some recipes tell you to add these ingredients in a specific order but truthfully I just throw everything in the breadmaker in the order it's listed, put it on the dough setting, and let it do it's thing. It turns out perfectly every time, and I've even used three different breadmakers.
After the cycle on the breadmaker is finished, I let the dough rise in the machine for a while longer, then take it out and form it into two balls which I place on a large cookie sheet, cover with saran wrap and refrigerate overnight. I take the dough out of the fridge about 2 hours before I want to start working with it so it gets to room temperature. Once I am ready to start cooking I dust cornmeal onto my pizza pans to keep the dough from sticking. I then roll the dough around in my hands with a bit of flour to remove any air bubbles and press it out onto the pizza pans. This recipe makes two large retangular cookie sheet sized pizzas with relatively thin crust.
Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the pizzas and share the recipes for the types I made!
