I have finally mastered the easiest, healthiest, crispiest, yummiest pizza dough ever. I have tried countless recipes, and have watched several of them fall through to the bottom of my oven or
barbecue. Or, I've had some recipes that did well when I first made them, but were horrible after being frozen. Lets face it, I'm a busy mom and I need a pizza crust that is easy for me to make AND one that I can freeze to use at a later date when I'm in a pinch for time. I finally have one!
The recipe is as follows: using a bread machine with the dough function, add 1 1/2 cups of warm water, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 TBSP salt, 1 1/2 tsp of sugar, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 2 1/2 cups of bread flour, and 2 1/4 tsp active yeast (Optional: add ground up rosemary, basil or garlic powder to the dough for more flavor). Turn on the bread machine and run it on the dough setting (takes about an hour and a half on my bread machine). Once the dough is done, break it off in to 8 pieces and using a lightly floured surface, roll them into little balls (pictured above). After you're done with the dough, grab a large skillet and turn on the stove to medium high heat with nothing in the pan.
At this point it is much easier if you have a
Silpat or
Silpin surface. I prefer my
Silpin because it has a guide on it to show me how big the circle is. My
Silpin mat was also a lot cheaper than my
Silpat- go figure! We're going to roll the dough out to be about 10 inches round.
Lightly flour the surface and ball, and grab a rolling pin.
Roll out the dough until it's about 10 inches round and very thin.
Pinch around the sides. You're doing this for two reasons, 1.) to help keep your toppings on your pizza later, and 2.) for looks. It looks more like gourmet pizza to me if it's an abnormally shaped crust for some reason....
After you have one crust ready, toss it in the skillet. You'll toast each side about two minutes. My schedule goes like this: toss dough on skillet, while it's cooking go and roll out another dough ball, go and flip the crust over, and while that side is cooking go and pinch the crust on the dough ball you just rolled out. Once the dough on the skillet is nice and crisp, take it off and toss on the next one.
Oh yeah- bubbles will happen. If you see one of these above....
smash it with your spatula!
This recipe will make 8 crusts, which you can either use right then and there for dinner, or you can put them in the fridge for a couple of days, or even the freezer for a couple of months. This crust is not only good for pizza, but as
flat bread for sandwiches, dipping into hummus, etc. The sauce? I use 12 ounces of hot water, 2 cans of tomato paste, 3 cloves of garlic minced, 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, 1/4 tsp cayenne powder, 1/2 tsp ground pepper, 1 1/2 tsp onion powder, 1/2 tsp oregano, 1/2 tsp marjoram, 1/2 tsp basil and 3 TBSP honey. Mix well and store in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, but it can be made the day before or frozen into a
Ziploc bag.
Toppings? Well, that's the fun part! We all get to make our own! Here we have bell peppers,
jalapenos, olives, mushrooms, ricotta, feta cheese, turkey Canadian bacon, sun dried tomatoes, sliced artichoke hearts, spinach and arugula. Oh- and mozzarella cheese!
The pizza then goes into an oven set to 450 for about 6-7 minutes. If you want to add arugula, spinach or basil leaves to the pizza, add them in the last minute or so. This is a fun thing to make in the summertime when you don't want to heat up your house using the oven, this dough works great directly on the
barbecue, using fresh summer veggies like zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes. You can thank me later :)
Wasn't the weather awesome today? It was the perfect day for an adventure! 
"Follow me," says my Ladybug girl, "we're going on a hunt!" 
For those of you who don't know, Ladybug Girl is an awesome series of books that encourages imagination and awesome adventures. My daughter has become hooked on them since her aunt and uncle got her some of the books for Christmas (and the lady bug costume too!). 
We spent the afternoon hunting down ladybugs, putting them in her bug container, counting their spots, then releasing them back into the wild. 
Ladybug Girl quickly learned which plants were the ladybugs favorites, like this Blue Honeywort. 
We also found a few hanging out on the celery.... 
We found a lot of them without spots. Ladybug Girl left them alone. She was only interested in counting spots. 
She left this one on the apple tree alone too.... 
She occasionally got side-tracked by the chirping of finches in the birch tree. She tells me there's a nest there, but that I'm too big to see it.... 
She does not like it when the ladybugs fly away from her before she can get them in her magnifying cup. 
Counting ladybugs can be tiresome. 
and I am still assessing the damage from Winter....
