There are two reasons for this: first, we've got more good pizzas than we need here. There's Dewey's, Mio's, and sometimes we get the delicious thin-crust Tuscan six-cheese from Papa John's. We've also been eating frozen pizza from time to time, too. Second, back in Philly I would buy really good pizza crusts from a nearby Italian market. I might be able to search for a good pizza crust here, but so far haven't had any luck.
So tonight, I decided to try making my own dough. My first project was to find a dough recipe that didn't tell me how to use my mixer and dough whip attachment. Don't have that. So I used this recipe from Mario Batali and did it all by hand. It wasn't too difficult at all. I substituted 2 cups of whole-wheat flour and used 1 cup of all-purpose, and I was a little worried after I let it rise, but it rolled out nicely. I couldn't have been happier, especially since I don't have a rolling pin and used a drinking glass instead! I also used half as much yeast as the recipe called for, only because I bought yeast at the store and didn't pay attention ahead of time to how much it required. I used all I bought.
I split the dough in half and made two pizzas. One had pesto, red and green bell peppers, thinly sliced cremini mushrooms, and red onions. The other had tomato sauce (from a jar), shredded Italian blend cheese, mushrooms, and fake pepperoni. Both were really, really, really good. The pizza crusts were great, especially the one I rolled out most thinly. I used some pinot noir I already had open and honey, and it was slightly sweet and really complemented the wheat. Yum, yum, yum. This was time-consuming, but not too difficult and really worth it.
Vegan pesto and pepper pizza
Cheese and fake pepperoni pizza
Homemade crust is definitely the way to go when you have the time. Yours looks yummy!
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