I hope you're all having a great day 🙂

First of of all, this is NOT my entry to the Foodie contest 😆 It's pure coincidence that I made pizza. I, however, will bring you a new pizza recipe with 8 ingredients for the contest in a few days.

This is one of my trick pages for eating pizza an hour or so after my family tells me they want pizza for dinner, and it's already some time after 5 p.m. You must guess--right--, I took a little longer today, so I could take the step-by-step photos.

When my son was still living with me, he used to ask me to make pizza at least once a week. Now that he lives in another country, pizza days rarely happen. So when I make it now, the mozzarella cheese, homemade tomato sauce and basil pesto have been in the freezer for a couple of months, just like this time.

I like to prepare the dough myself, and this time I used my quick recipe for pizza crust that will take you only 15 to 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 teaspoons cane sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

For the tomato sauce (for 3-4 pizzas)

• 2 cups ripe tomato, or 1/2 cup tomato paste
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon cane sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon rosemary

Toppings (30-cm pizza, 3-4 people):

• 400 gr mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup julienned red onion
• 1 cup canned mushrooms, cut in halves
• 1 cup black olives, whole and boneless
• basil pesto to taste
• freshly black pepper to taste

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To make this tomato sauce, I just put the chopped tomato and coarsely crushed garlic into the blender and let it work until the mixture becomes thick juice. Then I add the rest of the ingredients and blend for a few seconds.

Time to make delicious pizza for dinner!

The first thing I do is take the tomato sauce, basil pesto and mozzarella cheese out of the freezer. Then it's time to make the crust, which I like freshly made.

Put in a bowl all the ingredients for the dough, except salt and olive oil.

Mix well by hand. Knead a little, until the dough does not stick to your fingers, about 3-4 minutes. Form the dough into a ball and let it rest inside the bowl for 12-15 minutes.

I place the bowl over warm water and cover it with a clean kitchen towel to make it rise faster.#

Now add the salt; mix it with the olive oil and knead a little to incorporate the ingredients.

You'll be done in a minute and will see that the dough is soft enough.

Without wasting a second, spread flour on the counter and place the dough which you have shaped like a ball. Sprinkle flour on top as well to prevent the rolling pin from sticking.

Roll out the dough to about 35 cm in diameter, about 5 cm more than the baking pan. The idea is to be able to have a generous border that will help us to avoid the cheese and tomato sauce from spilling while baking.

I use the cake pan to prevent the liquids from falling to the bottom of my oven, as I like to put a lot of tomato sauce.

Pierce the dough with a fork to avoid bubbles.

Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes without covering it, so that the surface hardens a little and you can cover it with tomato sauce without pre-baking.

Have all toppings on hand. This will prevent your pizza from soaking in sauce.

Spread the tomato sauce with the back of a spoon.

Now start with the toppings. I always start with the cheese.

Mushrooms.

Olives.

Onion.

Pesto.

I take a teaspoon of homemade frozen pesto and add olive oil to taste.

Plenty of black pepper for me. I love it.

A little more tomato sauce.

I love a good quantity of tomato sauce in my pizza.

For me, sprinkling some salt on top is always the final step. Then I take the pizza to bake in the oven. It takes only 15 minutes to bake in my gas oven. This time I'm using my little electric oven, which takes 25 minutes to bake this 30 cm pizza.

Our homemade pizza is done!

I can tell because the cheese is melted and had begun to brown.

Wait about 10 minutes for the pizza to cool a little, because at this point, the cheese is still hot and can spill as soon as we cut a slice. Big mess.

Since I don't have a pizza stone, if I want to make this crust nice and crispy, I have to return the pizza to the oven and put it directly on the bottom rack and let it toast.

Generally, pizza is not the healthiest food, but boy, are it is popular. Homemade pizzas can be a very good option to enjoy them with your family at a much more affordable price.

I hope you have found this recipe useful 😁

Bon appetite!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

Banner by @andresromero 🖤

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