Pizza at Home

Making your own pizza can be a great family dinner activity. Tonight, however, it was just me making the pizza. little j was busy riding her bike and Big J was getting things ready for our camping trip tomorrow.

The September/October 2008 issue of Cook's Illustrated arrived about a week ago and, after skimming all the recipes, I immediately knew I wanted to make pizza bianca. This week turned out to be a little crazy and, because the dough has to rise at least two hours, I was never home in time to make it during the week. So today it was and before we headed out to to get our food supplies for camping I mixed up the dough and set it to rise.

This is an interesting recipe because the dough is incredibly soft and you don't knead it and shape it by hand as you would a typical pizza dough. Rather, after the dough rises you turn the dough out directly onto a rimmed baking sheet and stretch it to the edges of the pan.

The basic recipe calls for a simply topping of olive oil and rosemary, but variations with tomatoes and mozzarella as well as tomatoes, sausage and fontina were also included. I decided to split the pizza in half between the two variations.

Let me tell you that this is quite possibly the best pizza we've made at home. The crust was tender and chewy with crisp edges. The toppings were simply and flavorful. I am looking forward to trying the pizza with the simple topping of olive oil and rosemary, but I am also looking forward to experimenting with other toppings.