Pizzas

After nearly four days of eating Thanksgiving leftovers, my 9 year old was begging for something different..PIZZA!!! Usually I prepare my pizza using store-bought refrigerated pizza dough; however, I'm transitioning to where almost everything my family consumes is fresh and homemade. With that being said, it was overdue time for me to make my own pizza dough from scratch. I have tasted homemade pizza dough in the past and realized that it's usually BLAND as all get out; so, I tried my best to avoid that. It was a very simple recipe that I added garlic and onion powders to the batter in order to kick up the flavor. Typically, I would omit the pizza sauce when making my pizzas because I tended to make huge "pizza pockets" or calzones instead of the traditional open-face version;but, I was making a traditional pizza and I needed marinara sauce.  The sauce wasn't very involved, just crushed tomatoes and spices simmering for an hour. I had a huge steamer plate attachment for a extremely large stockpot I possess  (the thing is so big that baby Maelena sits in it and plays); so, I used the plate (it had holes for steaming) covered in foil as my pizza pie plate (it made a large 12" pizza). The pizza turned out very yummy the first night; but, the crust was still slightly bland. The next night, I put more of the garlic and onion plus a few additional spices in the dough mixture; but, once I rolled the dough out on the plate I sprinkled garlic, onion and a pinch of salt on the dough before adding the toppings. The result this time around was truly amazing. The crust was perfectly flavored but not over-powering to the sauce, cheese and toppings. This pizza is definitely making the cookbook...so eat your heart out big pizza chain because I'm coming for you!!