We Made Pizza!

Pizza Galore

Last weekend, Brian and I took our cooking dates up a notch and decided to make not just one but three recipes, and they all related to pizza. We chose to make our own dough using Bobby Flay's recipe and prepare two different pizzas, one based on a garlic cream sauce (Caramelized Onion and Mushroom White Pizza) and the other on a tomato sauce (Three-Cheese Bacon Pizza).

Hello, Dough

We began our cooking date with none other than the pizza dough.

If there is one thing that we learned from the get-go, it is that you really need a good mixer. My mother's little Sunbeam almost broke from the strain of mixing the dough. In fact, I watched in horror as the dough wrapped itself around the beaters, followed by the head of the mixer lifting away from the bowl. Thankfully, Brian did not have the same issues. I think his mixer is a lot sturdier than mine!

For obvious reasons, I didn't wait for the dough to form a ball: I just took the bowl out from under the beaters and hand-kneaded the dough until it was more cohesive, adding some water and flour as needed. Brian's dough was a bit wetter than mine, and we think that it was because of its water content. However, we couldn't tell for sure as we had never worked with dough before. He just added some more bread flour to his bowl and carried on.

We transferred our dough into a greased bowl, covered it with saran wrap, and let it rise for an hour.

The yellow onions in some olive oil

Forty-five minutes later!

Thanks to the quick-rise dough recipe, we were able to move ahead with making the toppings for the white pizza. We began with the most time-consuming step, which was to caramelize the onions for a whopping 45 minutes. Of course, this could have been done much faster (as Brian had done for his pizza), but I decided to stick with the full cooking time as I was waiting for the dough anyway. At this point, the kitchen was already smelling delicious. :)

Yummy mushrooms

After the onions were done, we used the same pan to cook and season our sliced button mushrooms.

The "White" Sauce

We then made our garlic cream sauce, which was surprisingly very easy to prepare. I usually have a lot of trouble working with cream cheese, but I didn't have any issues with it over the weekend... Though that may just be because of the fact that I was making a pizza and not a cheesecake. Haha. Shhh.

The dough over an hour later

It was soon time to divide the dough into two, and my, how it had risen. Look at that dough!

When I uncovered the bowl, I was surprised to find out that the dough actually smelled like bread. LOL. I know it's a silly observation, but I had never worked with bread before.

I divided the dough into two balls, covered each one in saran wrap, and let them rest for 10 minutes. Afterwards, I rolled out one of the balls and began to dress it up for the oven: 

Ready for the oven!

Once we had dressed up our respective pizzas, Brian and I popped them into the oven for 12–15 minutes at 500˚F. During that time, the house got really toasty! Be sure to open a window if you ever try this recipe out.

Voilà!

Brian's Pizza

And voilà! For first-time pizza makers, I'd say that we made decent attempts at the white pizza. I added some parsley over mine, sliced it up, and tried a piece with Brian. It was pretty darn good.

As for Brian, he said that he liked his pizza too. Unfortunately, his dough didn't rise too high during the fermentation process, though that was likely due to two reasons: the water content and the curious girlfriend who asked to see the dough when it wasn't ready. Sorry, darling. :(

The Three Cheese Bacon Pizza + Some Ham and Pineapple

Brian had plans for the rest of the evening, so I went ahead and made the Three-Cheese Bacon Pizza recipe that he had picked out. At my dad's request, I added some ham and pineapple to the recipe along with the bacon and the cheese blend. I did notice that because I had waited a while to make this pizza, the dough had enough time to rise even further. This ultimately led to a thick-crust, pseudo-Hawaiian pizza! I thoroughly enjoyed it, as did mom and dad.

All in all, pizza-making was definitely fun. I admittedly got a little dough-obsessed and made another batch earlier this week. I ended up using that dough to make another white pizza and some Crazy Bread (not pictured). I definitely recommend Bobby Flay's pizza dough recipe, which eliminates the long rising time. I also recommend the use of pizza yeast; it works wonders. Lastly, clear your schedules. There is always a learning curve to trying something new, and these recipes certainly were no exception. I spent close to five hours in the kitchen last weekend. You have been forewarned. :)