Pizza, Pizza, Pizza

Easy, casual dining fits our family best! Years ago, while at culinary school we began to make our own pizzas. Even back then we didn't make our own dough though - we headed to our local Italian deli/restaurant, Baducco's in Westlake Village for that. We might pop in and see Kirk Cameron dining with his wife or Billy Banks grabbing a sub-our kids thought it was pretty cool!

Today Trader Joe's is just down the street, so we go there to get our pizza dough. They carry whole wheat, herb, and plain varieties. Each package makes one large pizza or four individual ones. Recently we made individual pizzas. We bought one package of each type dough, cut each package into 4 portions. We rolled them into balls using olive oil lightly all over the round surface to keep them from sticking to one another and prevent them from drying out. We put them into an lightly oiled pan, covered them with plastic wrap and popped them back into the fridge until ready to roll them out.

Toppings: Trader Joe's has a pretty decent pizza sauce in the refrigerated section right by the pizza doughs. Some of us like ours without sauce, using just a light drizzle of olive oil and roasted garlic and then adding other toppings. Our all time favorite is roasted and shredded chicken breast placed on dough that has been lightly spread with barbecue sauce, finely diced red onion, cilantro leaves, grated mozzarella and grated smoked Gouda. Sound familiar? Yep we copied it from California Pizza Kitchen. Cautious eaters still go for pepperoni and cheese or just plain cheese. Kids will like eating their veggies on top of pizza.

~So here we are, doughs ready to roll out~

~I know this pizza stone looks like it's been in a war! It's well used and with the proper care a pizza stone will last indefinitely. Always put the stone in the oven before you turn it on. Some cooks just leave their stone in the oven all the time, we find it in the way for some baking usage. We leave it in the oven to cool down when all the pizzas are finished baking. Then remove it and wipe down with a damp cloth, scraping off the cheese bits. The temperature for baking pizza in a home oven is 550 degrees. Pizza shops have ovens that can reach into 1,000 degrees and higher. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes to bake a pizza and we usually give our pizzas an additional 2 minutes under the broiler too.

~The pizzas are rolled out and everyone has selected their own toppings.~

**If you click on the pictures, you can view them in a larger format**

Rolling out the dough is more like pressing it down with the heel of your hand and continuing to use your heel to achieve a round circle. The key is to use either corn meal or semolina flour as ball bearings to keep the pizza from sticking to the board. You can see the semolina in the picture above. Be generous. It also helps the pizza slide right onto the hot stone in the oven. If the dough gets sticky, drizzle a little bit of olive oil on the dough and continue.

~Hot from the oven~

Individual pizzas can be removed from the oven with a large spatula. For larger pizzas you will need a pizza peel or a cookie sheet without a rim to slide under the pizza and lift it out. To cut the pizza, press a large knife straight down as opposed to using a sawing motion or use a pizza wheel. We hope you try making your own pizza. You might just get hooked.