Craft Bake Domesticate: Greatest Pizza Crust

Well today was slightly better than yesterday. That is until I tried to make pizza again for dinner.
I buy bread flour in bulk at Sam’s Club. It’s a 25 pound bag and isn’t easily managed, so I dump some into a large square container and refill that as needed. So today before I started the crust, I needed to refill the container with flour.
I know you’re thinking there was a problem when I dumped flour from the giant bag to the smaller container. Well you’re wrong. The problem came when I temporarily lost my mind, forgot what I was doing, and started measuring my ingredients. Instead of putting the oil in the bread maker pan, I dumped it into the container of flour.
I ruined about 3 cups of flour trying to scoop out all of the canola oil I accidently dumped into the wrong place.
Anyhow, the crust came out fabulous, as it does when you use bread flour. Just remember, if you want to make this healthier, don’t use more than half whole wheat flour. Unless you like eating a brick. (see my post from yesterday if you’re confused)
So here’s the recipe to make two pizza crusts. Add the ingredients to the bread maker in the following order.
You can also mix this with a mixer with a dough hook, or by hand (I’ve done all three methods, and there is something to be said for kneading dough by hand. It’s quite therapeutic) If you choose one of the latter two methods, just let the dough rise for about 30 minutes after it’s kneaded.

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tablespoons of oil (I use canola)
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of dry milk powder (a must have)
4 1/2 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons of active dry yeast

Let the bread maker do it’s thing on the pizza dough cycle and when you’re done dump it out on a pizza pan and cut it into two pieces (or tear, whatever) and it should look something like this

Start rolling out each piece on separate pans (I only have one round and one square stone, so that’s what I use, dough is dumb, it doesn’t care what shape it’s in!)

You may get to a point where the dough springs back and won’t stay rolled out. Relax! Just let it sit for 5 minutes and think about how it’s misbehaving while your roll the other one out. When you come back, I promise it’ll behave and roll out smooth.

If you look close, you can see I stabbed the crust with a fork before I bake it, otherwise it tends to get air bubbles and blow up like a flying saucer.
Prebake your crusts at 350 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. The tops don’t get really brown, but a little tan and not sticky anymore.

Top it any way you like. I used pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and real bacon pieces for this one. Pop it bake in the oven for 5 minutes to melt everything into ooey-gooey-goodness, and there you have it!

I finished the partial jar of pizza sauce I had on this pizza, so the other I made with alfredo sauce (I prefer Newman’s Own brand; all natural and really tasty!) and cheese. I didn’t take a picture because my hubby took it out of the oven and by time I got upstairs it was cut up and half gone.
Anyhow, hope you give this a try and top it any way you like…barbecue sauce, grilled chicken, bacon, pineapple, and onion
or add crumbled hamburger to the one I made today and have a bacon cheeseburger pizza.
You could also brush the crust with butter and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Or do the whole thing like that and cut into bread sticks.
The possibilities are endless, but the crust is always a hit. My kids say there’s no reason to go to a pizza place anymore because “mom’s crust is the best-est”