Vegeterian Pizza From Scratch

I had my first ever pizza at Pizza Hut about 4 years ago ( i thought this as one of the advantage of getting married)..I didn't like much. My husband knew other place where he had pizza in his bachelor days. This place made Indian style pizza..He ordered Garlic Gourmet Veggie pizza with usual coke. I wasn't very sure about this until I had one slice and got completely hooked..This was the best pizza ever.. but this shop closed with the same speed as of mine liking the pizza. I was back to square one. I thought of trying it myself at home (yeah right), instead I talked my husband into trying pizza recipes. Finally he started trying several recipes for 1 year some came out good first time and next time they were the worst pizza ever, still we were always eating whatever we made as if we had to clean up our mess:)

He kept exploring new recipes with lots of variation since that was the only thing he was doing to help me in cooking on weekend, in spite of all his failures with pizza he was learning something every time and then came one day when he made this pizza, but like always we were not very positive if we can repeat the results. But over and over this pizza turned out consistently. Here is saying which goes "A good chef is who can repeat the results" there are many people who can make it good once. The fun part of making pizza at home is that you can choose your toppings and there is no mix-up of beef and bean (as they sound same over the phone when you are getting hunger pangs). The best is controlling amount of cheese..If you haven't given a shot yet, I recommend making pizza using this recipe and see the difference for yourself. When all said and done, I am now even a big believer of "Keep trying until you succeed". In this case this trying took one year, and along the way we learned something or the other. So here are all the tricks which now works well and I am happy to share our experience.


Here is My husbands recipe with step by step pictures and instructions:-

Ingredients:

3 cups bread flour
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoons yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

For toppings:-

Capsicum, Onion, Mushroom, Olives (thinly sliced)
Mozzarella cheese 1-2 cup

Procedure:-

1. Warm the water in the microwave. Make sure it is not hot otherwise it will kill the yeast.

2. Mix yeast, honey, salt, oil and warm water together in a bowl. Leave it for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes you should see a froth appearing on this mixture. This indicates that yeast is active and it will do a great job on your dough.

3. In bowl put flour and mixture from step 2, make this into dough. You may have to adjust the water or flour as needed. When adjusting do it 1-2 tablespoons at a time.

4. After making dough cover dough with some oil so that it doesn't dry while we let it to rise or you can cover it with food wrap also.

5. For best rising, select temp as 350F and bake time one minute, turn the oven off after one minute even if it says preheat. The idea is to create a warm environment for the yeast to do its work. Cover the dough with food wrap and let dough rest inside this warm place for 1.5-2 hours. The dough will double in size.

6. Since you have now at least 1.5 hours. This is the best time to prepare toppings. I use canned olives, fresh bell peppers, Onions, mushroom etc. Also make sure you measure cheese 1 or 2 cups and leave it to thaw.

7. Punch down this dough and now form it into sphere. Grease the pizza pan with some oil and then put spherical dough in the center of pizza pan and form it into a disk. I do this by hands and not by rolling pin( you can use the rolling pin if you wish). Make it at least 12" large in diameter so make sure pizza pan is large enough. I use 15"X14" rectangle pan.

8. Let dough stand for 20 more minutes. Spread 1/2 of the cheese and then put other toppings and finally finish with remaining cheese.

9. Bake the pizza for 15 minutes at bottom most rack in oven at 450. Make sure the oven is preheated before you put the pizza in.