Homemade PIzza Crust

A couple of days ago, I made a pizza, which I shared with my Most Faithful Readers. Making pizza crust is surprisingly easy, particularly after you've made it a few times.

• 1 package yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons canola or olive oil (olive results in crispier dough)
• 2 1/2 cups flour

Dump most of the flour into your mixing bowl (preferably in a stand mixer). Dissolve the yeast and the sugar in the warm water. Dump that in, start mixing and add the oil. Add the rest of the flour and the salt. You may have to add just a little bit more flour if the dough is extremely sticky after mixing a while. Let it rise a little.

I've been putting all my yeast dough in a cold oven, turning it on the default temperature for two minutes and then turning my oven off. It gets to approximately 120F in that length of time. My house is just too cold for dough to rise otherwise and this method works beautifully every time.

Spread out the dough on a greased cookie sheet. The dough was very cooperative this time, but I was very patient with it. You may not be so lucky.

For this pizza, I spread out olive oil as the base and then topped it with (drained) marinated artichokes, kalamata olives, sliced onions and mozarella. I also like using pesto, pre-cooked shrimp and bacon. Of course, you can use tomato sauce and traditional toppings, if you have them.

Bake at 475F for 10-11 minutes. I baked this one for 10 minutes, but it probably could have used 11. Yes, that's a lot of olives.

It was good! Like any other pizza, the leftovers are always good, too.