Pizza

If there was a food that I could eat everyday for the rest of my life, it would probably be pizza. This communal food always brings people together, I dare you to find someone unhappy around pizza. Better yet, don’t answer that, you probably know someone who has a dairy gluten allergy and they probably get violently ill at the mere thought of pizza. BUT IF THEY COULD eat pizza, they would love it too.

Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s a simple meal concept that has been satisfying humans since the dawn of time. You take bread, you heat it up with some veggies and cheese then you eat it. Pretty standard stuff. The first record of the word pizza actually being used goes back to 997 AD in Italy, but if you really want to go further you could with pizza. The Romans made their own pizzas out of focaccia bread called “panis focacius” heheheheh panis hehehehe. Sorry about that.

But if you think the Romans were the first to figure out that warm bread and cheese go together, you’d be mistaken. You know what’s about to happen right? Of course you do. THE PERSIANS had pizza! Well I definitely do not know if they started it, but it’s been said that the armies of Darius the Great would heat up bread on their shields with cheese and dates for some sort of awesome vegetarian soldier pizza.

The whole pizza craze wouldn’t really transform the culinary world until much later in history though. Why? Well you needed our good friend colonialism to bring tomatoes to Europe for the idea of pizza sauce to take place. (That’s right, if you weren’t already aware, tomatoes are not native to Europe. Not even a little)

Once tomatoes became popular in Europe (the late 18th century), pizzas became incredibly popular in Italy, where the poor would use it to brighten up their food. Once the Italians came over to North America in the early 1900’s, pizza slowly became a fixture in the American diet. But if you thought that pizza was just an overnight sensation, you’d be wrong. Originally, pizza’s popularity was limited to those in the Italian immigrant community. The pizza craze didn’t start until after World War II when G.I.’s coming back from the war brought back their love of pizza to the States. After that, it was game over. Pizza is now a gigantic industry and you typically have four BILLION pizzas sold each year. Let that sink in for a second. Has it sunk in? Now chew on this, pizza represents a 30 BILLION dollar industry! If you took pizza away, you’d have major problems people.

So anyways, pizza is the best.

My love for pizza started early in my childhood, I would down slices upon slices of plain cheese pizzas as all little children are wont to do. One of my earliest childhood memories was my Mom attempting to make a pizza at home. Her ingredients? Pita bread, ketchup, and a hot dog. Needless to say, I didn’t eat it. I just looked at my Mom, and even at that young age I knew that pizza did not look like that.  But I can’t fault my Mom, one of the oldest pizza places in Iran, used ketchup for their tomato sauce.

As I graduated to a young adolescent I took on more toppings and now I’ll eat just about any kind of pizza, short of anchovies. Gross.

Making pizza at home can be intimidating, but using store bought dough (hold your gasps) makes it so much easier. We’ve managed to pull this together in a half hour when the dough is thawed, that’s how easy this recipe is to make. The trick is using the pizza stone, you could probably achieve something similar without it, but the pizza stone is the secret weapon. If you’re getting married or have just recently gotten married you’ll almost certainly have/receive one. Don’t shy away from it, it’s a bread making star!

I used pepperoni as my topping, because uhh it’s awesome, but you don’t have to. Just make this pizza and enjoy all the pizza savings! For the price of one delicious delivery pizza, you can make two even more delicious homemade pizzas!

Recipe – Homemade Pizza

Ingredients

1/4 Cup of Homemade Pizza Sauce – I used the recipe from the Kitchn, it’s easy and freezes well.

*What I did differently was that I used Tomato Puree and garlic powder instead. This saved a ton of time *

Pizza Dough (you can make your own, but this is way easier) It runs for about $6.00 at Whole Foods in the freezer section, so worth it.

1 Cup of Whole Milk Mozzarella Cheese Cut into cubes or slices, not too thick, not too thin

1 Pizza Stone

10 – 12 Pepperoni

Method

*Preheat your oven to 520 F, make sure your pizza stone is already in the oven.

Step 1 – Prepare the pizza dough. If you’re using the brand I recommended it’s fairly easy. You just allow it to thaw in the fridge, then coat it in olive oil in a big bowl. Once it’s fully softened, cover it with some flour (think about a 1/8 cup) and then roll it out.

Step 2- Once the dough is properly rolled out and thin, spoon the pizza sauce onto the dough. Use the back of the spoon to thin it out. You don’t want too much sauce.

Step 3- Put your cheese evenly around the pizza and then finish with your toppings of pepperoni.

Step 4- Place the pizza on the pizza stone and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. *

Step 5- Remove the pizza carefully from the oven and enjoy!

This part is tricky if you don’t have a pizza paddle (which I do not). I always prep the pizza on a sheet of wax paper so I can securely lift the pizza dough onto the stone. I keep the wax paper on while it bakes so when it’s done I can easily remove the pizza from the stone. This has been the only way I have figured out that doesn’t end up in a pizza disaster.