A Birthday Pizza!

For my birthday dinner, on Monday, I couldn't decide what I wanted to cook. I didn't want to make anything that was too involved or required that much time, so I settled on a pizza. After work I came home right away and got out my bread machine. (Lucky we only have it below a cabinet, because it goes away and comes out again numerous times a week.) We have the Cuisinart Convention Bread Maker and this dough recipe is right from the book that comes with it, except I use more whole wheat flour than they suggest, but it always tastes great.

Ingredients (for 2 pounds of dough)

Water (80-90 degrees F) 1 and 1/3 cups

Sugar 1 teaspoon

Sea Salt 2 teaspoons

Extra Virgin Olive Oil 2 tablespoons

Bread Flour 1 cup

Whole Wheat Flour 3 cups

Yeast (active dry) 2 1/4 teaspoons

Place ingredients in the order listed in the bread pan fitted with kneading paddle. It takes a hour and 40 minutes to be completed.

These were my birthday surprise since Danny couldn't wait to give me my present.

After the dough is done I rolled it out on a non stick cookie sheet. (I sprayed it with PAM anyways.)

For the sauce I used one can of crushed tomatoes. I seasoned it by sprinkling an equal amount of garlic powder, parsley, oregano, basil, salt and pepper over it.(It sounds like a lot, but don't be afraid!) I also sprinkled grated peccorino romano cheese over it. After all of that is on I cover most of the pizza with part skim mozzarella cheese and then leave some off. (I like to have a piece with cheese and a piece without.) For this particular pizza I cut up leftover eggplant, zucchini and mushrooms and put it on the area that had no cheese.

Put it in the oven for 30 minutes at 425 degrees and it will look like this....

VOILA!

My plate. Yum. I love to use the extra balsamic dressing to dip the cheese-less pizza in.

This requires barely any prep time and comes out so tasty. Homemade pizza (to me) is just SO much better than what you get at a pizza place (most of the time anyways.)

Happy hump day!