Pizza, Pizza!

Last night I made a pizza for dinner. I make a pretty damn good pizza if I do say so myself. Between me, Mom and Kevin the entire thing was gone in a flash.

I need to work on the picture thing when it comes to my food. I always forget to take one until I've already started eating and think "Gosh! This is good! I should blog it!". I promise, I'll work on taking the pictures before eating the food. When the pizza came out of the oven it was a sight of beauty!

I used a basic pizza dough recipe from my kitchen aid book. Just flour, salt, yeast, water, sugar and olive oil. You could use your own favorite recipe for dough (and if you have one, please share! I'm still searching for the right one).

The toppings are what really made this pizza. Diced ham, browned in a skillet then I sauteed onions and garlic in the same pan. I used sauce leftover from my last pizza (tomato sauce, canned crushed italian style tomatos, italian seasoning, crushed red pepper, garlic powder and salt and pepper), pepperoni (always!), banana peppers, fresh parsley, italian cheese mix and a light dusting of garlic powder. I prebaked the crust for about 5 minutes and then added the toppings and baked for an additional 15? minutes. Just until the cheese was nice a brown.

The garlic and onions really sang on this pizza. I hate having plain onions on my pizza but if they're sauteed a bit then I'll eat them by the pound. Carmalization is KING when it comes to onions. I was worried about the dough being soggy from the sauce since it was a bit watery after thawing from it's stint in the freezer, but it had a nice crisp bite on the bottom and nice and chewy on the inside. It could stand to have a bit more flavor but I love the thickness and chewiness of this crust.

We had this with a toss salad (green leaf lettuce, onions, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes for Mom and Kev). I made a balsamic vinaigrette that was just delicious. I did 1/2 cup balsamic, 3/4 cup olive oil (ran out of EVOO so I just used olive oil), a healthy squeeze of dill mustard (no Dijon on hand), italian seasonings, salt, pepper, fresh parsley, and crushed red pepper. It was delicious, easy and I don't see a need to vinaigrette dressing ever again.