Homemade Pizza with pizzazz

     My family loves pizza. I wanted to make it healthy enough for it to be made once in two weeks. Ordering from Pizza Hut or Domino's is okay once in a while but I can't help the feeling, I am not doing right by my kids feeding them fast food.
   After a lot of experimenting I came up with the idea of making pizza from scratch at home. It gives me a lot of free reign over how many toppings each pie has and the variety of the toppings. I don't have an oven that works. I got a pizza oven from Amazon called the Presto pizzazz pizza oven.I know it's a mouthful, but you will be happy when you have a mouthful of yummy pizza.

   I love this oven. It has a rotating pizza plate on a pivot with coils on the top and bottom and it makes divine pizzas in about 20-25 minutes.You can have a crispy crust or crispy cheese and toppings or both.

Here is my pizza dough recipe.


Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
11/2 tsp Honey
1 pkt active dry yeast
1 cup warm water(tepid)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil


Method:
1.In a large bowl mix warm water, yeast and honey. Leave this mixture be for 10 minutes.
2.The yeast must double, look frothy and have a fruity smell .Now, add all the flour,salt and oil and hand mix it into a dough. Please do not worry if the dough is either loose or tough. Accordingly you can add a little more flour or water(just a little), usually this ratio turns out perfect.
3.Now, knead the dough for atleast 5 minutes.The dough must spring back when you push on its surface with your thumb, then it is ready for the first rising.
4.Now grease a bowl with olive oil on the inside, coating the inside surface. Place the dough in the bowl, the dough will double in size so take a large bowl.
5.Cover the bowl with clear plastic wrap and I usually put it in my non-working conventional oven in a draft free warm place.You can even wrap the bowl with a towel for added warmth. Leave the dough for a good hour.
6.The dough must be doubled by now or atleast risen a little. Punch it down with your fist to release air. If you want breadier dough do not punch and knead again. If you like crispycrust then knead again and let it rise for another hour.
7.After an hour your dough is done. Usually you can make 2-3 pizzas from this dough depending on the size of the pizza and crust.


Pizza sauce:
1 can Crushed tomato
1 Tsp dried oregano
1 Tsp dried basil
2 Tbsp tomato ketchup
1 Tsp chilli powder
1 Tsp E.V. olive oil
salt to taste


Method:
1.Heat olive oil and put in the dried herbs .Immediately followed by crushed tomato and rest of the ingredients. Mix thouroughly and let it thicken, while cooking the raw tomato taste away.
The sauce is ready. Let it cool.It is that simple I like to keep it simple.


Now for the toppings I use canned sliced pineapple cut into chunks, pitted sliced olives and sliced mushrooms.I love  sliced Jalapeno, broccoli, basil, bell peppers and onions as my toppings too. Hey! It's homemade, anything goes. No Ka-ching! Ka-ching! for added topping.
I buy shredded mozzarella and shredded Mexican cheese mix from Costco. I usually freeze it in freezer bags in quantities needed for one pizza at a time. It saves a lot of money.
Assembly:
1.Roll out portion of the dough to fit the pizza plate. Use flour on the roller and surface on which you are rolling the dough out.
2.Once on the pizza plate, smear a little oil on the rolled dough then ladle out the pizza sauce evenly on the pizza. Then comes the cheese, add both mexican blend and mozzarella cheese evenly as much as you would like. Take care not to load too much cheese as it makes the pizza heavy .
3.Sprinkle the toppings on the top.
4.Now, I think if it is a conventional oven, It would take 345 degree oven 20 minutes.
In the pizzazz pizza oven, I dial it to 20 and keep it on dual coils meaning upper and lower coils and forget it...atleast until it cooks.


Enjoy your homemade pizza .