Over the holiday a couple weeks back, we decided to stay put and not go anywhere. It was very low key, which gave me time to cook. One night I made the mussels, which I discuss in a previous post, and on another night we had homemade pizza. When I say homemade pizza, I mean homemade pizza. I made everything from mozzarella and ricotta cheese to the dough for the crust to literally grinding and seasoning meat to make Italian sausage. It was a whole production that took the better part of the day (off and on). I know most people probably don’t want to spend that amount of time in the kitchen but it really was an off and on sort of day, casually doing one thing and then another later and so on until the components were ready for the actual pizza making. Personally I think this can end up being a family sort of activity where you can get kids involved in each facet of the process or allow them at the end to put the pizza together using ingredients of their choice.

I used the red sauce that I posted about a few days back and simply reduced that down further until it was very thick (pizza sauce needs to be much thicker than a tomato sauce that you would use for pasta or something like that). I used a dough recipe from a recipe from Mark Bittman which I found by simply goggling pizza dough recipes. I thought it sounded good so that’s the one I landed on this time around. The mozzarella cheese recipe I used was from a cookbook entitled Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll (which is a great beginner’s guide to making fresh and aged cheeses). I posted a recipe for the ricotta a while back and it’s very easy. I purchased a pork shoulder from Barth’s market and ground it using a medium grind. If you don’t have a meat grinder or meat grinder attachment for your stand mixer, you can certainly use ground pork instead. The ground meat was seasoned using only a few ingredients and I didn’t bother putting in cases…simply sautéed some small patties until they were almost cooked through and then finished the small sausage patties in the oven on the pizzas. From there, I chopped some fresh veggies such as mushrooms, onions, peppers, and garlic and chopped some herbs such as parsley and basil. We then had the components necessary to create a number of different pizzas. We ended up making a couple with sausage and a couple of vegetarian, which was great.

All of this sounds like a lot of work and it certainly isn’t the easiest of meals to make…but it’s pizza night and it can be fun if you have the right mind set. So decide on the ingredients you’d like to have as toppings, make the dough and sauce. If you don’t feel like making cheese, buy some fresh mozzarella and ricotta if you’d like and go from there. It can be as easy or as complex as you’d care to make it. Once you have the ingredients ready to assemble, the pizza making can go rather quickly…ten to twenty minutes per pizza depending on the size of the pizza and the temperature of the oven or grill you are using. Oh I almost forgot…if you have a pizza stone, you obviously need to use it. If you don’t but you think you might make this more than once it’s certainly worth the investment as you can usually purchase one for around $20. The recipes for the various components and the final pizzas follow after the jump…enjoy pizza night with your family. I think you will find that it’s a fun and enjoyably delicious experience.

For the Dough Ingredients:

6 Cups Unbleached AP Flour

2 Teaspoons Kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling

1.5 Cups warm water

1 Tablespoon honey

4 Teaspoons Instant Dry Yeast

4 Tablespoons olive oil, plus more for brushing dough

Instructions:

• Gather all ingredients.  Carefully measure flour and place in large bowl.  Add salt to bowl and mix well.  Set aside.
• Place one cup warm water in bowl.  To that, add yeast and honey.  Mix well.  Allow to sit for five minutes or until mixture become foamy.
• Add water and yeast mixture as well as olive oil to the bowl with the flour and salt.
• Carefully fold flour into the wet ingredients turning the bowl as you go.  I use a pastry scraper for this.  A wooden spoon will work too.
• After you finish, if you think you need a bit more liquid to combine the ingredients, add a tablespoon or two of warm water and mix again until well incorporated.  I didn’t use additional water after the initial cup but it may be necessary.  Do not use too much water as the dough will become wetter as you knead it.
• Scrape dough onto a lightly floured space on your counter (do not use too much flour as you do not want to add a lot of additional flour to the dough).  Knead the dough for a few minutes until the dough is shiny and more elastic.  You should notice that the dough becomes wetter and then dries out a bit as you continue kneading the dough.  Once it feels drier but not dried completely, you are done.
• Roll dough into ball.
• Place dough in a large bowl and cover with either a kitchen towel or plastic wrap.  Allow to rise for around two hours.  I allowed mine to rise four or five hours by simply making the dough ahead of time and getting back to it when it was closer to the time to cook the pizzas.
• Once the dough has risen, divide the dough into half and then into half again to make four dough segments.  Roll dough segments into balls and allow to rest on counter for about 30 minutes.  Cover with towel while resting.
• Place pizza stone in oven and turn oven on to the highest temperature setting (usually 500 degrees, the higher the heat the better).  Allow oven to preheat while the dough rests (approximately a half hour).
• Once the dough has rested, it should have risen again quite a bit.  It is now ready to be rolled out and shaped into pizzas.
• Take a dough ball and with your hands and fingers, stretch the dough out carefully starting at the center and working your way out to the outside, turning the pizza dough often as it stretches.
• Once you’ve reached a size you are happy with, it is now ready to be cooked.
• Place pizza dough in oven for three or four minutes.  Remove from oven and place dough on the back of a cookie sheet.  Working quickly, add ingredients to pizza dough, brush crusts with olive oil, and sprinkle crusts with coarse sea salt or kosher salt.
• Slide pizza dough back into oven and continue to cook for another ten minutes or until crusts and topping brown to your preference and tastes.
• Remove from oven by sliding the pizza onto the back of a cookie sheet.  Then slide the pizza onto a wire rack and allow to cool on wire rack for a few minutes prior to slicing.

Serve while hot.

For the Sausage:

Ingredients:

1 Pound ground pork or freshly ground pork shoulder

1 Cup Italian parsley, loosely packed and rough chopped

2 Tablespoons toasted fennel seeds

1 Teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes (for spicy sausage)

1 Teaspoon Coarse sea salt

Instructions:

• Toast the fennel seeds by placing a small pan on medium low heat and cook until fragrant, moving them around the pan frequently to avoid burning…about 4 minutes.  Allow to cool.
• Take Ground pork and place in large bowl.  Place all in bowl and mix well but trying not to over mix so as to preserve the texture of the ground meat.
• Allow to sit in the refrigerator for a few hours to overnight to allow flavors to combine.
• When ready, take a tablespoon of the sausage and cook over medium heat until just cooked through, around eight minutes or so.
• Remove from heat and set aside until ready to make pizzas.

For Sauce:

Use the recipe for the fresh Jersey tomato sauce posted a few weeks ago and reduce sauce over medium until you reach a very thick sauce, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching.

Alternately, use any tomato sauce you have on hand and reduce in the same manner.

For the Mushrooms:

Heat pan over medium high heat for four or five minutes. Add a bit of vegetable or canola oil into the pan and once it begins to smoke a bit, add the mushrooms. Sautee mushrooms until golden, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside for pizzas.

For the Vegetables:

Thinly chop onions, red bell peppers, and garlic. Set aside as pizza topping options.

For the Kale:

Remove ribs from one bunch of kale. Heat a pan over medium high heat for several minutes. Add grapeseed oil or canola oil and cook quickly moving the kale around the pan until slightly wilted. Add a couple tablespoons of water to pan, and once water dissolves, remove Kale from pan. Add a touch of salt and red pepper flake. Set aside as an ingredient option.

For Cheese:

I made my own mozzarella cheese and enjoy it. I used the recipe contained in the book which is linked earlier in this article. If you don’t want to make your own mozzarella, use the freshest mozzarella cheese you can find.

I also used ricotta. You can find a fresh ricotta recipe on this site from an earlier post or you can again, simply purchase the freshest ricotta you can find.

To assemble:

Arrange the sausage, sauce, vegetables, cheese, and assorted herbs, salt, and red pepper flakes in a line. Once crust is precooked a bit (per instructions in crust section), remove from oven and being assembling your pizza using whichever combination of ingredients you choose.

Allow your family members to choose their own ingredients…get them involved.

Cook pizzas at 500 degrees until the crusts are crunchy and the toppings are browned to your liking (15-20 minutes depending on pizza size).

Remove from oven and allow to cool on racks for a few minutes prior to slicing. Serve while warm.