This, that, & pizza!

I spent some time ‘playing’ with our blog design last night thinking I could just go back to the original if I didn’t like the outcome…………
Not so much!  Ha!  So after lots of tweaking this is the new blog look! It was actually fun to play around with it; and it helps that I have live-in tech support if I ever get too far over my head. :)

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Today was the FIRST day in a few weeks that it was not beautiful outside. It was actually rainy and gray all day long and even though I’ve been loving the beautiful weather, it was a good day to stay in jammies…

and get caught up on things inside our house. (read: cleaning!) This is not to say that we didn’t miss being in the great outdoors…

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And finally, since this has turned in a really random blog post… A few nights ago we made homemade pizzas for dinner – we’ve made them before, but tonight they turned out the BEST we’ve ever made them so I thought I’d type up what we did so hopefully we can recreate them again soon!!!

We did a combo of Ina Garten and Our Best Bites Recipes…  I like Ina’s recipe because it calls for honey instead of sugar.  (Please note that is probably the ONLY time you’ll ever hear me say I like something as a sub. for sugar!!!)  OBB (Our Best Bites) gives a great tutorial about making pizza in general – it’s super helpful if you’ve never done it before! 

(FYI this recipe is intended to make 6 personal pizzas.  I would assume if you want to make big pizzas this recipe would yield 2 larges or 3 medium pizzas.)

Ina’s Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups warm (100 to 110 degrees F) water
• 2 packages dry yeast (or 4.5 teaspoons)
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading

Ina’s Directions:

• For the dough, combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add 3 cups flour, then the salt, and mix. While mixing, add 1 more cup of flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead the dough on low to medium speed for about 10 minutes until smooth, sprinkling it with flour, if necessary, to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
• When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead by hand a dozen times. It should be smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl and turn it several times to cover it lightly with oil. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
• Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll each one into a smooth ball. Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover them with a damp towel. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Use immediately, or refrigerate for up to 4 hours.

** This is when I switched to the OBB directions…  (I’m going to paraphrase, but these are their instructions!)

Our Best Bites Directions:

• Preheat oven and stone to 425 degrees
• Roll out dough into a circle (we did three small individual pizzas on the counter and then I transferred them to the stone once it was preheated.  They barely fit on our stone, but we made it).   At this point you’ll have half of your dough left over.  We went ahead and made three more mini pizzas and just refrigerated our left-overs.
• Place dough on stone and poke holes with a fork all over it.  Pour on a little olive oil and spread it to the edges.  Lightly sprinkle garlic salt all over dough. 
• Bake your crust without toppings for 6-10 minutes until golden.  Because we did small ones we erred on the side of 6 – 8 minutes.
• Pull your pizzas out and top with sauce, cheese, and toppings.
• Return to oven for another 6-10 minutes. 

ENJOY!