What can be better than unbelievably delicious pizza, the food of goods that somehow appeared on Earth? It’s homemade pizza with your favorite toppings and crusty base prepared from scratch. It is not only a tastier option if compared to the box pizzas you get delivered from one of the takeouts. It’s also healthier.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take too long to make some homemade pizza dough and use it as a base for a bunch of pizza toppings you like. You just need about 15 minutes to mix all ingredients together, knead the dough and precook toppings if required.
Dough rising and pizza baking take up the most of the homemade pizza cooking time. But, those are the parts where pizza is cooking on its own. That’s why you’ll have to spend not more than 30 minutes of active cooking time to get your homemade pizza ready.
And, if you manage to double (or even triple) the recipe to make some extra pizza dough and freeze it in your freezer all rolled out and ready to be topped and baked, you’ll end up with a couple of homemade pizza bases you’ll be able to use anytime you decide to treat yourself with some pizza goodness.
Follow the recipe below to make some dough for thin and crusty homemade pizza bases and top it with whatever you like. We’ll make sure to give you a couple of our favorite topping options.
How to make homemade pizza
What you need:
- ¾ cup of warm water
- 2 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1tsp of instant yeast
- 2tsp of salt
How to make pizza dough at home:
- Measure all ingredients mentioned above. Make sure to set your oven at 500F and keep it on like so for at least 30 minutes before shuffling your pizza in.
You don’t need to do that right away, as you’ll have to let the finished dough rest for 1,5-2 hours. - Grab a large bowl and pour the water into it. Add the yeast and use a wooden spoon to stir it into the water until they’re well-combined.
- In a separate bowl, mix flour and salt together.
- When that’s done, add the dry ingredients into your initial mixing bowl and use the same spoon to incorporate them into the water and yeast mixture.
It will be quite difficult to do that, as the dough won’t be smooth and even. In fact, it will look like quite unpleasant sticky dough lumps.
But that’s just how it’s supposed to look at this point. - The next thing you’ll have to do is clear out your cooking table, sprinkle it with a generous amount of flour and transfer your dough from the bowl onto the working surface.
- Knead the dough incorporating flour from the table until you may form a nice, smooth and not sticky ball out of it.
Feel free to add some flour to the table if you see that the dough is still a little bit uneven and sticky.
Be careful not to add to much flour, as the dough should remain quite moist. - Once the ball is formed, set it to rise for 1,5 hours or until it’s doubled in size. Meanwhile, take care of the chosen toppings (fry mushrooms, shred some cheese, slice tomatoes and onions, get some pepperoni, etc.).
- When the dough is ready, divide it into two even parts and place the first one into the freezer. Make sure to use it during the next 2 days. Otherwise, it will go bad.
- Cut out two 12’’ parchment paper squares to use as the base for your pizza discs. Grab the remaining dough and divide it in half. Using your hands, form two ¼-inch thick pizza discs.
- Spread some pizza sauce onto the created discs, add the toppings, transfer your homemade pizzas onto the baking stone (or the bottom side of a baking tray) and pop them onto the middle shelf of the preheated oven.
- Rotate pizzas after they’ve been baking for 5 minutes and leave them in the oven for additional 5 minutes to let them catch some more crustiness and cheesiness.
- Take your pizzas out from the oven. Be patient and let them cool down for 5 minutes before serving.
Homemade pizza topping options
1. Pizza Margherita (for 15’’ base) – 1/2 cup crushed San Marzano tomatoes, dried oregano, salt, pepper and olive oil; after 5 minutes of baking – add ½ pound of mozzarella and some fresh oregano leaves.
2. Bacon and broccoli pizza – 3 strips of fried bacon, 1 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese, 3/4 cup of chopped broccoli florets, some sliced tomatoes, salt, oil.
3. Pepperoni-mushroom pizza (for 15’’ base) – top with 1/2 cup tomato sauce, 2 cups shredded mozzarella, sauteed mushrooms and sliced pepperoni to your taste, bake and garnish with some pecorino and dried oregano.
4. Onion and corn pizza — cover the base with caramelized onions, top with thyme, corn, olive oil, salt, and pepper, add some fresh basil once baked.
5. Hawaiian pizza — top with ½ cup of tomato sauces, chopped pineapple, shredded mozzarella, sliced ham and red pepper flakes.
- Measure all ingredients mentioned above. Make sure to set your oven at 500F and keep it on like so for at least 30 minutes before shuffling your pizza in.
