Pizza pizza!

Many of you have been over to our place and made your own pizza.. whether it be from our pizza parties or someone was craving pizza and asked if they could make their own. No matter how you’ve experienced it, it all starts with the pizza stone. We purchased the one from Williams-Sonoma and so far it has been awesome.

It took some time to accept the fact that it would not remain clean forever- I say it’s got character now. And it also took some time to perfect the temperature and timing of the pizzas-15 minutes at 395 degrees.

We’ve made our own pizza dough recipe from Silver Spoon or just random websites online. But the quickest and easiest way is to go to your local Trader Joe’s and buy their premade pizza dough (wheat, regular, or foccacia). It’s only $1.29/bag and works great for those last minute meals when you don’t want to wait 4 hours for your dough to rise.

As for ingredients, our staples are onions, mushrooms, tomatoes. We’ll vary the prosciutto, jalapenos, bell peppers, or whatever else we’re feeling like. We pick up a bag of shredded mozzarella from TJ’s and their tomato paste. We decided tomato paste is better than the pizza sauce.

Some pizza stone tips:

1. Clean using only water and baking soda. You don’t want food tasting/smelling like soap!

2. Parchment paper should be used for everything! Roll the pizza dough right on, and then throw it in.

3. Pizza stone is SUPER HOT! Careful not to touch. Use a wooden pizza peel to move the pizza in and out.

4. You can leave the pizza stone in the oven- no need to take out and put in everytime. It actually helps regulate the oven.

5. If you cook other items in the oven prior to making pizza, the stone retains all that prior heat, so the pizza temp must be lowered (from 395 degrees), otherwise it will burn the bottom. We still haven’t figured out the correct lower temperature.