Let's Try home made pizza

Ok, so for this "try it Tuesday" I am going to share with you my latest culinary adventure, a pizza made with home made pizza dough. My original plan was to do the sauce from scratch too, but there were forces conspiring against me, so I decided to just stick with the dough for this attempt. I've been wanting to try this dough for awhile now. It's a recipe I've read that several other bloggers tried and loved. I also had finally acquired my bread machine... and decided to give it a whirl (no pun intended!).

But first I had to run to the store, 2 stores in fact. I had to run to CVS because I had some ECB's that were expiring AND they had Coke products on sale. My original plan would have netted me 4 - 12 packs of Coke for about $5, but as I tried to print out some Coke Reward coupons, my ink cartridge completely gave out on me. I searched in vain for the refill I bought a few weeks ago, and COULD NOT FIND IT. Finally, frustrated, I just headed to CVS and bought the soda anyways, better luck next time I guess. Then on to Kroger to pick up flour. Flour would be a crucial ingredient in making pizza. I suppose you think it's odd that I don't already have flour in my house, considering if you know me, or have been reading my blog, you know I have stockpiles of practically everything. Everything except flour. I knew that I did have some flour, but I knew at least part of it was self rising (bad for bread machine) and the other, well I honestly couldn't remember when I bought it (I never really use it much) so I decided it would be best to start from scratch.

Now, next time I decide to be adventurous in the kitchen, I will probably exercise a little pre-cooking planning, but I was hell-bent on making this pizza. And while I do know how to cook, have a pretty decent stocked kitchen in terms of equipment, etc... lately cooking has been more of a quick process. Quite frankly, I'm a bit out of practice to actually preparing a real meal, from raw ingredients. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's more of a sign of the times...

The following are actual phrases heard from my mouth last night, that could probably give you an indication that I probably should have just had a bowl of cereal and tried again another night:

"Kev, I can't get the bread machine out of the box!"

"Kev, do we have any measuring cups that we're not using for dog food?"

"Kev, can you Google how many teaspoons make up a tablespoon?"

"Kev, can you do something with this dough ball?"

Don't you feel bad for poor Kev, who I had convinced to postpone having dinner, because I was going to make us a pizza? See, the bread machine had just been bought this weekend, and it didn't want to come out of the box. I don't do alot of baking from scratch, so when I cook, I'm good at eyeballing, I rarely need to measure a dry ingredient, other than Zali's puppy food, so it seems that the measuring cups have disappeared except for hers. And I believe that the tablespoon measuring spoon has wandered upstairs with the humidifier for cold season.

I do recommend pre-assembling all of your ingredients. I did this, it helps... I also recommend reading through your recipe before you start, I did this, it helps... I also recommend not being scatterbrained while you're doing it, I didn't do this, but I think it would help. The first mistake I made was as I started dumping my flour into the mixing chamber... BEFORE any of the the liquids (in case you don't use a bread machine, this is a No-No) so I had to dump that out, wipe the residue out and start over. Now the unfortunate thing, I didn't really take timing into consideration. So when I finally started the dough in the bread machine and did the math, imagine my mood when I realized the dough was going to take an hour and a half... and it was almost quarter after 8!!! (Que poor Kevin as I explain "well it will only have to bake for about 15 minutes once it's done!"

An hour and a half later, my machine beeped, and I headed back in to check out my doughy goodness. After removing said dough, I realized that this dough made a bit more than I would want to use, so this is where "can you do something with this dough ball" came in, as I divided the dough in half (the other half is now resting in the freezer). As I formed my pizza, I got ready to start preparing it. I ALMOST forgot that you're supposed to sprinkle the dough with salt before putting on the sauce... and when I say almost, I mean, I had placed a blob of sauce in the middle of the pizza when it occurred to me. Though I didn't notice a big difference in tast between that spot and the rest of the pizza when all was said and done.

Finally, at 10:15, we were chowing down on the home made pizza. It was good. I will definitely use this recipe again. I've normally used one of those mixes in a pouch, but not always been satisfied with the results. Maybe next time though, I'll actually have my act together!

And if you're wanting to see a picture of my creation... well... if you hadn't been able to gather by reading this, that was another FORGOTTEN step... maybe next time!