At-Home Take-Out

My husband and I LOVE to eat out. Especially when we were both working, it was easy to say "I'm too tired to cook." Now that I'm home full-time it's a bit easier to plan ahead and take my time making yummy food. This week's at-home take-out was, of course, PIZZA. This is my husband's favorite food. Since we've been married (a little over a year) we've probably made at least 10 pizzas. The finished product usually looks something like this:


(Chicken Alfredo Pizza with homemade dough and alfredo sauce)

The crust is made from scratch with a modified recipe. Here's a basic one for you to enjoy. We added more flour, sugar, oil... but this is a pretty good crust, too :) Experiment with the ingredients to get your perfect pizza crust. This recipe is from cooks.com

Homemade Pizza Dough

pkg. dry yeast
1 c. warm water
3 c. flour
1 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Dissolve the yeast in warm water. Combine all dry ingredients except flour. Add the yeast dissolved in water and vegetable oil to the mixture. Then add flour by the cup (add 1 cup of flour, mix, add another cup of flour, mix...). I usually add 2 cups to my mixture. Then I turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and knead the remaining flour into the dough. Cover and let rise until double in size (about 1 hour). Spread dough into 2 pizza pans (or 1 for a thicker crust), add sauce and toppings. Bake at 550 degrees for 7-10 minutes, depending on crust thickness.

Easy peasy, right? In the long run I think we do save a few dollars by not getting our favorite $5 pizza. And this pizza is way better than that take-out stuff. :)