Delicious Restaurant Quality Pizza & Dessert Pizza AT HOME MY WAY!

PIZZA CRUST/DOUGH (I prepare no-knead dough the night before for making our pizzas.  This dough recipe makes four med size pizzas.)

(I learned the basics of the crust recipe from an issue of Mother Earth News. The link is here  and the authors also have a very nice blog where they try new recipes. But, I digress... here we go...

No-Knead Dough

3 cups very warm water (NOT lukewarm) (think “hot but no hurt” - like hot bath water)
2 teaspoons or 1 packet active dry yeast
6 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon salt

Instructions: 

Measure 3 cups of very warm water (should feel hot to your hand but you can hold your hand under there without having to remove it). Stir in the yeast until mostly all dissolved. Let the yeast/water sit while you measure the flour and salt into a mixing bowl.  In about 10 minutes, the water/yeast should be getting a foamy top.

In a large mixing bowl measure 6 ½ cups of "fluffed" all purpose flour. Add 1 Tablespoon table salt and stir well to combine.  

Pour the yeast/water into the bowl of flour/salt. Stir (a wooden spoon works great) as much as you can until all incorporated. It will be very shaggy. It will not be a ball or anything, just a big bowl of shaggy dough. Cover with plastic wrap (I use a plastic Walmart/grocery bag) and place in the fridge overnight or for at least 2 hours.

Pizza Instructions

This dough will last about 8-10 days in the fridge (covered with plastic).  Any time you remove dough from the bowl you first sprinkle flour over the surface of the dough (like 1/4 cup). That just keeps it from sticking to your hands (and I think kind of feeds the yeast growing in there to develop a delicious flavor) each time you use it thereafter.

So, sprinkle about 1/4 cup of flour over the top of the cold dough in the bowl.

Remove a piece about the size of a grapefruit. Form it into a ball/disc and let it rest for about 5-10 minutes. On a floured surface, roll out to fit your pizza pan.

Deep Dish Pizza:

In the iron skillet/pie pan place:

3 Tablespoons oil and swirl around with a pastry/bbq brush. (It will be oily - that’s okay. The crust absorbs this oil and it makes it really yummy. Trust me on this.)  Make sure your crust is rolled out bigger than the bottom of the pan/iron skillet.

Drop your crust in. Best case scenario is if it comes up some on the sides but mine tends to shrink back and that’s okay as long as it fills the bottom pan. Pull/stretch it a little bit to fit.

Spread crust w/ sauce, some parmesan cheese (green can is fine), grated cheese and then toppings - we like pepperoni because we’re boring.

Bake in preheated 450 degree oven until crust is brown. 

We like our cheese to start to brown a little bit. The crust will be a little oily underneath like Pizza Hut. Its delicious and leftovers are just as yummy.

(Hint: I plop this pizza out of the iron skillet onto a cutting board to slice.)

Pictured here are slices of the deep dish (iron skillet) pizza and the thin pizza.

To make a thin crust pizza (which my hubby prefers).

Roll out your crust as thin as you can and place this crust on a cornmeal sprinkled (also sprayed with cooking spray) cookie sheet/pizza pan. Its nice if you can slide this pizza onto a hot baking stone in the oven, but that is a little tricky with thin crust/sauce/toppings all on there. So I just bake on the cookie sheet. Just make sure to spray the cookie sheet/pizza pan with cooking spray or grease/oil it before you sprinkle w/ cornmeal and the crust on there. (The cornmeal gives the crust a certain good texture/taste but isn’t an absolutely necessity here).

Add sauce, cheese, toppings, and bake in preheated oven until its browned like you prefer (20-30 minutes?).

And who can have pizza night without dessert?

To make a delicious Dessert Pizza:

Cream Cheese Streusel Dessert Pizza 

(Instead of cream cheese filling, you could also use any canned pie filling or sweetened fruit!)

Spray pizza pan / cookie sheet with cooking spray. Remove a grapefruit sized piece of dough from the bowl, letting it rest.  Roll it out and place in the pan. 

Filling:

1 8-oz cream cheese (non-fat, low fat, or regular - all fine)
1 egg
½ cup sugar

Soften cream cheese in the microwave a few seconds until you can stir it.  Add the sugar and egg.  Blend and spread over the dessert pizza crust.

Streusel Ingredients:

1 small yellow cake mix (Jiffy brand) or ½ regular yellow cake mix (dry)
½ stick butter/margarine (melted completely)

Sprinkle cake mix over the filling.  Drizzle with the melted butter/margarine.

Bake in preheated 450 degree oven 15 minutes or so until crust is browned.  Remove from oven to cool app. 10 minutes.

While this is cooling, stir together your glaze:

Glaze Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons margarine/butter, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla
2-3 Tablespoons milk
1 ½ cups powdered sugar

Whisk melted margarine, powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth and pourable. Add more milk if needed to make a pourable glaze.

Drizzle over baked, dessert pizza.

Cut the dessert pizza into fat short strips because this is a delicious but rich little finish to pizza night!