So despite the fact that I very rarely want to *eat* pizza, I’ve always wanted to know how to *make* pizza. And since I had one of my very rare pizza cravings this week, I decided to actually use some of that knowledge that school has crammed into my brain, and do pizza mostly from scratch.

Dough (scaled massively down from my textbook recipe):
1 cup warm water (about 100 degrees)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 packet active dry yeast, .25 oz.

3 and 3/8 cup all-purpose flour (the 3/8 should be semolina, but I wasn’t able to find any at the store)
3/4 tablespoon salt
1.5 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for coating bowl.

Method:
place just a little less than 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl, stir in yeast and sugar to dissolve, set aside to bloom for 5-10 min (until it’s all foamy)

in large (stainless steel, preferably) bowl, mix 2 and 3/8 cups flour (or 2 cups flour, 3/8 cup semolina flour if you have it) and salt.
gradually mix in the remaining 3/4 cup water. all oil, stir until well blended (about 2 min)
fold in yeast mixture with rubber spatula
mix in remaining 1 cup flour
knead on lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes (seriously. time yourself.) ** at this point I should mention that I somehow ended up with quite a bit of flour left over in the bowl. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. As long as your dough ball is smooth and elastic, it’s all good.
lightly oil the bottom and sides of a clean bowl, rub the dough around in it, and leave dough in bowl smooth side up. cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, somewhere between 1/2 hour and 60 minutes.
punch dough down, shape into pizza crust.
* I have no round pizza pans, so I pressed it out into one of my sheet pans (cookie trays). The dough is incredibly elastic so it took me a while, since it kept springing back. A trick that I found worked pretty well was to press it out to the edges, leave it for a few minutes, come back, press it out again, and repeat until it would actually stay pressed out all the way to the edges of the pan. It doesn’t take that long, promise.

Sauce:
1 small yellow onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
olive oil
salt, pepper, oregano, basil, ground coriander, nutmeg, sugar, dill, crushed red pepper
1 large can crushed tomatoes.

– sweat onion in olive oil.
when onions are translucent, add garlic, cook for a couple minutes.
dump in the entire can of tomatoes. At this point you might want to reduce the heat so that it doesn’t splatter all over the place as it cooks. Add spices to taste. I wish I could tell you what I used, but I have a bad habit of never measuring things when I cook at home.
Simmer gently for a few minutes. Done!

Assembly:
Press or roll out pizza dough to desired shape.
Top with sauce (not too much)
sprinkle liberally with mozzarella cheese (I also used some “italian blend” from the store, which was mozzarella and asiago)
Top with whatever you want! I added some sauteed mushrooms, breaded eggplant (store-bought), cooked hamburger meat, and more cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for somewhere around 20 minutes (or until it’s done).

Yay! Also… delicious.