Margherita Pizza

it was time for a date night and I took dinner into my own hands. with the leftover mozzarella from the caprese penne I made the other night, I decided I would attempt my hand at margherita pizza - all from scratch. the results were okay, but needless to say the one I had at the grand last week was a heck of a lot better. 

pizza dough seems to be my worst enemy. I just can't seem to roll it out enough so that it's not this big thick mess when it comes out of the oven. I made the dough from scratch using a simple no knead pizza dough recipe that I found on foodgawker. it was great and easy to make, my problem just comes with rolling it out with the pin. I attempted homemade pizza two years ago for andrew and I and it failed, too. we couldn't even stomach the mess that it was and we ended up going out for dinner. I must say, at least this one we could eat. 

the dough is awesome. I still have tons left and am planning to make stromboli with it tomorrow night! I think if I had been able to roll it out more, this would have been very successful.

I made the sauce from scratch, too using an awesome five minute recipe. it really did only take five minutes and there are leftovers that I plan to throw over some curly noodles later! a can of crushed tomatoes, garlic, basil, salt, pepper and lemon juice. it is delicious. my go-to homemade pasta sauce from now on.

I read somewhere that the pizza tastes better if you put the basil on after cooking. so as it baked in the oven at 400*f for 20 minutes, I cut basil ribbons and watched jersey shore. it was fitting for the meal, they were in italy, I was making a traditional italian dish - totally relatable, right?!

anyway, here is the finished product. it is not as pretty as I expected it to be but I know where I went wrong. next time I'll use less dough and I'll roll it out longer. the cheese wouldn't have burnt if I hadn't had such thick dough but for it all to be cooked this was the messy result. it tasted awesome, just didn't quite meet the photographic expectations that my head had made. that's the thing about foodgawker, it gets me so hyped to have these beautiful creations and most of the time my food looks like the creation of a kindergartener. I try not to worry about it though because once it's in your tummy, who cares what it looks like.

the dough recipe makes a lot so I've been scouring the internet for things to make. stromboli is tomorrow night's adventure and if there are still leftovers, I may try pizza balls. as for baking, I feel that's necessary at some point this week, too. I never did make the pie from scratch that I wanted to this summer so maybe I'll try that. otherwise I do have my eye on red velvet swirl brownies...hmm. we'll see what comes of it all. the evenings go by so quickly after working all day.

I hope everyone enjoys their last week of august. it's hard to believe the back to school wind up is here! until next time, happy making!