Pizza Dough Recipe!

Here are my pizzas I made last night for the Ellis family birthday celebrations!:)

So, many of my friends have been asking for the recipe I use for my pizza dough! I must give all the credit to my mom...it's really her recipe! I grew up eating this yummy pizza and now I am thrilled to share it with all of you! Enjoy!



I am going to give you the recipe for crust for a cookie sheet. It makes enough to fill up an average size cookie sheet. If you just want to make a round smaller pizza, I would cut the recipe in half!



Ingredients:



1 and 1/3 cups warm water

2 packages of yeast

2 tbsp crisco

2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

4 cups flour



Steps:

1) Melt the yeast in the warm water. stir it around so the yeast is mostly dissolved. (Don't worry if some of it isn't...not that big of a deal!)

2) Add crisco to the yeast mixture...stir.

3) Mix the dry ingredients together

4) Add the yeast mixture to the dry ingredients, mix well. (Once you mix in the ingredients with a spoon, I recommend that you use your hands to work the dough (Work It!). This is what my my mom recommended to me and it works fabulous! Just work the dough until it is all mixed together! Sometimes when I make the dough I find that it is still a tad bit dry so I have to add a little more warm water.:)

5) Spread the dough out on to a greased cookie sheet. I have found that just using a glass (dipped in a lil' flour)to roll the dough out on the cookie sheet works a lot better than a rolling pin because it's smaller and I can spread it towards the sides of the cookie sheet easier!! (Once again, this is what my mom does too!) The dough will rise quite a bit so don't worry if it looks a little thin! (Add a little flour as you need to if you are having trouble getting the dough to roll!)

6) Top with your favorite pizza sauce and toppings!:) I really like the Chef Boyardee pizza sauce...I always add sugar to it, because I do not like tart pizza sauce! The sweet sauce has gone over very well with my family! You can ALSO use just regular old spaghetti sauce if you do not have pizza sauce on hand...RAGU makes a yummy chunky tomato spaghetti sauce that is delicious on top of pizza...I add sugar to that too!;)

6) Bake at 400 degrees for about 20-25 mins! (depending on how soft/crispy you like your crust!) I bake mine about 22 mins and it's still soft in the middle, but a little crispy on the outside!



**This recipe is also DELICIOUS as Calzone dough! Yumm!!! Make the dough...spread it out into a circle...add toppings to half of it...fold over and seal the edges (I use a fork!)...brush the top with olive oil, parmesan, and basil (yumm!!)...bake at the same temp as above for about 18-20 mins..and enjoy!**