Pizza Day!

This is my favorite type of pizza.  Just simple and light!  I think the crust would have been better if I ate it right away instead of rebaking it because it got a little too crunchy.

I started the morning out with eating an omlette made with 1 egg and some egg whites.  I added 1 ounce of low fat shredded jack cheese.  That with a piece of toast with butter and jam, and a couple cuties was the perfect breakfast!

I have a phobia when it comes to working with yeast.  I just never could get a handle on it.  My cousin Mark told me he was trying to find a good pizza dough recipe so we decided to try it out together.  He had made a couple of recipes before and wasn't happy with the ones he tried though.  We ended up using America's Test Kitchen's recipe. 

They had us put the bread flour (I used my imported italian flour), yeast, and salt to a food processor (thank God my aunt had her big food processor!)

While that was pulsing to mix the dry ingredients together, we added extra virgin olive oil and warm water.

We let it mix until it became a dough ball.

Yay first time making pizza dough!!!

We took the dough out and started kneeding it on a floured surface.

My cousin did most of the kneeding since he has done this before, then he formed it into a ball and put it into a metal bowl coated in oil to let it rise.

Covered it with a kitchen towel (my great aunt made this one along with some others that we still use today.

We stuck it in the oven (not that it was on or anything, just to put it in a dark area to rise), and went out to get our ingredients at Nugget, with a quick pit stop at Target.

When we got home, we took a look, and it did what it was supposed to do!  Yay!

We still let it rest in the oven while we prepared our toppings.  Which included:

Sausage-

Mushrooms-

And pepperoni, olives, and you can't forget the cheese!

After getting the toppings in their bowls, my cousin divided the dough into 3 balls, one for his super thick crust, one for my mom's regular crust, and one for my thin crust.

He started working on mine to get it really thin. 

He even attempted to toss the pizza dough a couple of times.  There was a tiny casualty in the tossing though.

My mom and I came to the conclusion that it looked like a T-Rex head.  Hee hee!  When each dough was rolled out to it's respective thickness, we started topping the pizzas.  We topped my mom's pizza with what she requested because she needed her nap.

From left to right its my cousin's pizza which had pepperoni, sausage, olives, mushooms, and cheese, pretty much everything we had for toppings.  The middle was my mom's with sausage, olives, mushrooms, and cheese.  Then mine, which just had fresh mozzerella, and parmesan.

I broke out my new pizza stone and paddle, and put the stone in the oven to heat up.

We baked mine first, but ended up letting it sit instead of eating it so I put it back in the oven after the other 2 and we tried that one last, so I'll show it last. 

The second one we tried to bake was my mom's but the dough kept bunching up and we could not get it on the pizza stone for the life of us!  So, my cousin decided, we're making it a calzone!

And you know what?  It was amazing!  It was like pizza stuffed bread!

I sliced it up and we each had a piece.

It was gooey and cheesy and delicous.  See what I mean by being a pizza stuffed bread?

Yuuuummmm!  We put the thick crust one in last.  It was amazing as well.

It looks like a pizza you can get from a local restaurant! 

We finally got to my pizza, and then I had a casualty.  When I took a bite which was hotter than hell, the cheese whipped up under my chin and scalded my neck!

That thing that looks like a pimple is a blister.  Yes, it happened that fast!  It looks horrible right now!  It's all red and scabby!  Yuck!
But on the upside, the pizza was fantastic!

After our dinner, we were all stuffed.  Our cousin brought home almost 1/2 of the total pizza we made!  I did make us sugar free chocolate mousse with real whipped cream for dessert as we watched It's Complicated. 

Even Rusty came to watch the movie too!

What a day we had!  We were completely exhaused but had a great time!