Pizza Night

 Viv and I have always loved making pizza at home.  Sort of like our version(s) of fried rice, pizza is often a "clean out the fridge" type of concoction.

Often, I make dough in my bread machine, but this time, I bought the dough that you can buy in the Publix bakery.  One thing I've found about their dough, though, is I let it sit out at room temp for hours.  Otherwise, it's practically impossible to roll, stretch, pat out, etc.  It just doesn't cooperate if it's too cold/cool.

Tonight, we wanted to use up some of the vegetables that we have on hand. We went with onion, roasted red pepper, olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, garlic, bacon bits and some blue cheese crumbles (on my side.)

Pizza Pre-Bake

Get in our bellies!

One thing I do when I make pizza at home is, as you can see, I pat the dough out onto a jelly roll pan. I spray it well with either PAM or sprayable olive oil, pat the dough out, then pre-bake it at 500 degrees for about 5 minutes. It's good to poke some holes in the dough with a fork or knife.  This helps get the underside of the crust crisp, as well as, firming up the top side before you start with your toppings.  Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes, and there you have it.  I'm not pretending that this is just like a pizzeria, but for home pizza, it is pretty damn good!