All Things Edible Pizza....May I take your order please?

Hello? Is anyone out there? I know I'm late, but I brought pizza! And not just any pizza, homemade pizza, with Daring Baker Challenge Dough!

Last month Rosa, from Rosa's Yummy Yums chose pizza dough for us to make, in memory of Sher, who was to be one of her co-hosts for the month. And I missed the party. Actually, I missed most of the month due to illness, so did not get my dough made in time to join the 1000+ other Daring Baker's who brought pizza to the party.

Now I have a pizza dough I am pretty happy with, nothing fancy, but it comes together in a jiffy, and rises in about an hour. It works for us. Which doesn't mean I'm not willing to try other recipes, I'm open to them. Maybe one of them will be even better and come together even quicker than my current recipe.

The challenge was to make pizza dough using the recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, easy enough to do. Oh wait, there was a twist - we had to try and toss at least 2 balls of the dough, and try and get a picture of us doing so.

Do you see a picture of me tossing dough anywhere? Don't go straining your eyes, it isn't there. I tried, I really did. Several times. But this dough is soft! And very pliable. So soft and pliable that picking it up off the counter usually resulted in it being stretched very thin, ready to be topped.


Oh, did I mention I had cleaned up my pantry recently, and had thrown out my cornmeal? It was a surprise to me as well, and a bit of a pain for transferring pizza, ultra thin, pizza too. By the 4th pizza, I gave up trying and simply pressed the pizza out onto a pan instead.


Homemade pizza in my home is usually "make your own pizza" night. I set out toppings that the children will eat, and they each make their own. My youngest always makes a face on his (which did not survive the transfer to the oven, but was still eaten.) I have found I usually go vegetarian on my pizza's when we do this, but went a little different to try out this dough: On half of my pizza I brushed garlic butter, generously, then topped it with marble cheddar, mozzarella and parmessan cheese. On the other half I spread homemade tomato sauce, then used crumbles of a medium Italian sausage and a generous amount of mushroom slices, which I had sauted in garlic and butter, before I put on both mozzarella and parmessan cheese.

It was yummy, though not exactly pretty.

Now this dough did come together quickly in the mixer, though it required the advanced planning of being made a day ahead. It was soft, almost too soft, and while I like thin crust pizza, I like to have the option of a thicker crust, which I really didn't have. It also didn't have much flavor to it, not even the slight yeasty aftertaste which most dough has.

So while it might be good for an ocassional change, it won't replace my regular dough.

Normally about now I'd suggest you get out there and read all kinds of other Daring Baker post about this month's challenge, but I suspect everyone but me has done that already. Personally, I am far behind on my reading, but at least I finally caught up on making the challenge.

Oh and I'm really looking forward to this month's challenge, probably making it this weekend, so no worries about being late with that one!