Easy Homemade Pizza

Nourishing pizza you can feel good about feeding your family! This easy homemade pizza recipe makes it simple, fast and fun! In less than 5 minutes you can make the dough, then walk away and let it rise about 45mins to an hour. It takes 10 minutes to cook! And as if that wasn’t good enough, you can use this dough for more than just pizza too (my favorite kind of recipes are multi-purpose). With a slightly crunchy crust, somewhere between a thin crust and traditional, it’s sure to be a hit with all pizza lovers.

What you will need to make this easy homemade pizza:

Equipment:

• I love my perforated pizza pan. It gets the crust as close to a pizza oven as you can get! I just take a little tiny bit of oil onto a rag or my hand and rub it all over. The pizza just slides right off the pan when I take it out of the oven.
• I have also used a normal round pizza pan (cast iron version) with great success. Just rememberer if you’re using cast iron to make sure it is a well seasoned cast iron pan.
• Pizza cutter
• Mixing bowl & spoon or dough hook to stir with (you can also use your stand mixer with dough hook if you prefer! )

Ingredients:

• 500g flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 250ml (or 1 cup) of very warm water
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 Tbsp active/instant/rapid yeast
• EVOO or whatever melted fat you want to use. (make sure it’s not HOT. Temps above 115 can kill yeast).
• Whatever toppings you desire: pepperoni, pizza sauce/marinara/cheese/banana peppers etc.

How to make easy homemade pizza:

• First add flour and salt to a mixing bowl.

• Second, combine your water, honey and yeast.

• Once yeast has bloomed/woken up, add the liquid mixture to the flour and salt. Stir to combine.

• Add in 1/4cup + 1 Tbsp EVOO or whatever oil you have. Continue to stir to combine. *note: if your dough has dry bits that won’t incorporate, add a little splash more (about 1tbsp) of evoo.

• Once it’s all combined, knead it by hand in the bowl for just 1-2 minutes.

• Cover with a towel and walk away for about 45 minutes.
• Come back now.
• Preheat the oven to 500F

• The dough should have grew in size.
• You’re ready to get the pizza rolled out and in the oven! Dinner will be served in less than 15 minutes.

• Add about a tablespoon of oil to the clean surface that you will roll the dough out onto. Spread it out with your hand.
• Divide the dough in half. Place the other half back in the bowl covered while you roll out the first half on your oiled surface.

• Roll the dough out into a circular shape almost the size of the pan you are using. (my 4 year old was helping; you can see his cute little finger poking the dough.)

• Transfer the dough to your pizza pan.
• Top with marinara, pepperoni, oregano, and cheese (or whatever toppings you prefer).

• Bake at 500F for about 10 minutes.
• Slide the pizza off the pan & onto parchment paper on your countertop. Let it sit for a couple minutes if you can before slicing. This helps the cheese set. (In the image, I used raw cheddar cheese; yours will look more “cheesy” if you use mozzarella. I was out of mozzarella here. I prefer a blend of cheddar & mozzarella but usually will just choose one since I grate my own cheese from the block.)

• Repeat the process with the other half of your dough.
• Serve with banana peppers, chips or whatever you fancy with your pizza.

• Enjoy!

Notes about making easy homemade pizza:

• Allow the yeast/water/honey mixture to sit for 1-3 minutes until you see the yeast begin to “bloom” or “wake up” as I call it. It will look frothy like this on top of the liquid. That’s how you know your yeast is alive and ready to raise your dough!
• The dough will look like it is dry before you add the EVOO, you’ll notice extra flour in the bottom of the bowl. This is expected. Just add the recommended amount of oil in the recipe and this should remedy the issue. If not, add another tablespoon of oil until the crumbs of flour incorporate.
• Be careful not to load your pizza down with too many toppings. I learned this from an Italian mama who said they usually limit themselves to 3 ingredient pizzas.
• Also note, if using fresh cheeses like the big ball of fresh mozzarella, make sure they are low moisture so they don’t water your pizza down. You can squeeze it in a tea towel to help wring out any excess moisture if that’s all you have. Sharing this tip because no one likes a soggy pizza.

What about using freshly milled flour?

• I have used up to 200g of freshly milled hard white wheat flour and 300g of organic all purpose flour for this recipe and it is my family’s new favorite combo since incorporating freshly milled whole grains into our bread products.
• To mill my grains in the recipe where I substituted 200g of all purpose with the freshly milled flour, I used a tea cup to scoop a cup full of the grains. Then I measured the freshly milled flour after grinding the grain.
• You should have 500g of flour total for this recipe.
• I would avoid using any kind of soft wheat as it does not develop the gluten strength needed for pizza dough.