Whenever I’m not in the mood of cooking, my husband loves to order pizza ( I know I’m being spoiled!) and living in Toronto we’re blessed to have amazing Halal restaurants and pizza places.
My passion for cooking always haunts me because it’s actually not hard to make pizza at home. And you for sure know your ingredients in the pizza!!
You could make the dough and the sauce ahead of time and freeze, when ready to use thaw the dough and the sauce in the fridge the night before.
This will make 1 large pizza- 12 inches
Pizza Sauce
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1 tomato, crushed
salt to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp tomato paste
1 Tbsp Olive oil
Heat the oil and add garlic and oregano, saute for a minute and add all the other ingredients. Cover and cook till it’s nice and bubbly, simmer for two minutes. Switch off the heat, you can use the sauce immediately or store in the fridge after it’s cool.
Pizza Dough
2 cups All purpose flour
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast
warm water to bind the flour
Take about 2 tablespoon warm water, 1 teaspoon sugar and the yeast. Mix and let it rest till the yeast fluffs. In another bowl put the flour, salt, remaining sugar and olive oil. Pour the yeast mixture and using extra water bind the flour mixture to make a soft dough. Cover and let it rise( 2 hours) before using.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Sprinkle some flour or fine semolina and roll out the dough, same size as the pizza pan.Put the dough on to the pizza pan. Apply the sauce on the pizza dough, arrange toppings of your choice and sprinkle some or lots of mozzarella.cheese.
Bake till the sides of the dough are golden, it takes about 20 minutes to bake.
Cut into slices and Enjoy!!
nice and soft pizza dough!
I usually use Pizza menus from the restaurants to help me get ideas of the toppings ?
Some topping ideas-
Leftover bbq or grilled chicken
sliced onions
Bell peppers- red, yellow or green or all of them!!
Hot peppers
Sliced Olives
Cooked ground meat/chicken
Pineapple pieces
Beef pepperoni ( Cresent Halal)
Mozzarella cheese
Home made pasta sauce
I like to use the above sauce as a base to my pasta sauce too. After the garlic and oregano, I add chopped onion and chopped green bell pepper followed by tomatoes, black pepper, cayenne pepper, tomato paste and salt. Cook till thick.
