#48 – Homemade Pizzas – Check!

Do you love crossing things off of a list as much as I do? I think it comes from my Mom carrying a list around with her for years and watching her get satisfaction out of crossing things off…but that’s just a guess. It could also be my own Type-A personality at it’s best!

This past weekend, I was able to highlight/bold an item off of my 101 in 1001 list, and it felt soooo good! After we picked up all the chitlins from their various pick-up places, we went home to make…

Homemade Pizza!!

I don’t know who was more excited…me, or the kids! In a pinch, I’d say it was me that was the most excited, but that’s just my dorkiness coming out…

I found a recipe for the crust from here that sounded too easy not to try. The recipe for the sauce came from here, and I made it ahead of time since it takes a while to cook down. I assembled the rest of the ingredients, organized my “helpers” and got down to making some pizza crusts. For my first attempt, they weren’t bad…but they weren’t great either…too much like bread, not enough like pizza crust. But still yummy!

Tanner wasn’t interested (read trying to be cooler than most in his 13 year-old angst) in forming his own crust, so I made both his and mine. That was totally fine with me, since that gave me one to “practice” on before making mine! LOL! Jenna was all about making her pizza crust, and Brent got all fancy with some tosses and throws just to show off his skills…

Everyone topped their own pizzas and we got ready to put them in the oven. Right before we slid them in the oven, we took out the breadsticks that I had also made (Recipe found here!) We just used the pizza sauce as a dipping sauce, along with some Ranch, for the breadsticks and viola! we had an appetizer to hold us over while our pizzas cooked.  The breadsticks were ah-mazingly delicious, even if I forgot the kosher salt...I think that I'd try this bread as a pizza crust next time, just for grins!

Here’s the final product…mine and Brent's...



Don’t they just look yummy?





Like I said, I want to keep looking for a pizza crust recipe that I like, but the sauce recipe was wonderful…I would agree with her that it might be the best pizza sauce!  As a dipping sauce it was a bit spicy (which you could tone down by eliminating some of the crushed red peppers that it calls for), but on the pizza itself no one complained about anything being too spicy. It must have been good, because not much was left on anyone’s plate!

I’d also like to try some pizza cooking tips – like warming my pizza stones first, scary! – the next time that we do this…which will probably be next weekend. We’re big on pizza around here!