Homemade Pizza Dough

There is nothing like homemade pizza crust. It tastes sooo much better than the best you can buy in the grocery store. I use my basic roll dough recipe that I have posted several times. It is great for rolls, cinnamon rolls, cheese danish, cheese rolls, pepperoni bread, calzones, and PIZZA DOUGH. For the pizza toppings, I also think it's fun to scavenge through my refrigerator and use ingredients I have on hand to challenge myself to create culinary magic. I know. Kinda sad.

Here is my roll dough recipe again:

Basic Roll Dough

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup water

1 egg

1 stick butter, sliced

2 tsp salt

6 tbsp sugar

2 pkg yeast (either regular or rapid rise)

Place ingredients in bread machine. I like to add about 1/2 the water first, then the flour and other ingredients, including the rest of the water. Set the machine to the dough setting. This takes 90 minutes. When the cycle is over, roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut into the desired sizes.

My toppings were: leftover grilled chicken, fresh basil, chopped red bell pepper, grated cheddar cheese, and a few strips of bacon. For my sauce I used Ragu Pizza Quick.

After the dough was ready, I divided it in half and sprinkled it with cornmeal as I rolled it out.

Then I placed it in a greased pizza pan. (I don't let it rise).

I covered it with my toppings.

Bake at 450° for about 20 minutes or until the crust is golden around the edges. This pizza did not last long at my house.

While it is baking you can reserve the other half of the dough for future small personal pan pizzas. I divided it into 5 portions and rolled them out individually. Then I separated them with pieces of parchment paper.

I wrapped them with plastic wrap and put them in the freezer. When you want to make small pizzas, you can pull as many as you need out of the freezer and place the toppings on them and bake them without thawing them first. How easy is that?