Week 29 and 30: Pizza Margherita

I am going out of town this week for a family reunion, so I am counting this meal as two weeks because I used two recipes.

I love homemade pizza and I wanted to find other ways to use our fabulous basil from our garden.

Enter Pizza Margherita. This is a two-for because we made the dough from scratch as well.

Easy and Basic Pizza Dough

From Just Cook Already

1 cup warm water
1 package dry yeast or 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast in bulk
1 tsp. sugar
2 tablespoons oil
2 1/2 cups flour

1. Mix all ingredients together in mixer with dough hook.
2. Knead for 3-5 minutes until dough goes into a ball and is smooth. (if needed, add a couple of tablespoons of flour to help it not be too sticky.)
3. Roll up in plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Split dough in half and roll out dough onto cookie sheet.
5. Melt a bit of butter and spread on dough with a pastry brush over crust.
6. Cook for 8 minutes.

Pizza Margherita

1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon EVOO
1/2 cup basil leaves, coarsely chopped and julienned
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesean
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, sliced 1/2 inch thick

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. In food processer, combine tomatoes, EVOO, salt and pepper to taste and process until smooth.
3. Spread sauce on dough.
4. Sprinkle basil leaves on top of sauce.
5. Sprinkle Parmesean cheese.
6. Arrange mozzarella cheese and tomatoes.
7. Cook for 15-20 minutes until edges are golden brown.

Rating: 4. I loved the crisp crust (we made it thin to be more true Italian) but the original recipe had the oven temp set to 500 degrees so we set off the fire alarm when the crusts got a little too crispy. Also, I would cut the mozzarella into smaller pieces to spread it out on the whole pizza.