Best Homemade Pizza Recipe Ever

Do you have the same problem as me? That your homemade pizza always seems to need a fork to be eaten properly? To me that’s not pizza, that’s just lame dough and some mashed up ingredients. Nick was looking around for pizza recipes one day and found this one—the top-rated recipe on allrecipes.com—and it works beautifully. It works beautifully in my lousy apartment oven. It works beautifully in the oven in my mom’s tiny sailboat kitchen.** The recipe below should make two cookie sheet-sized pizzas like the one pictured (which, by the way, is pesto, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and gorgonzola).

Ingredients

2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 1/2 c warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
2 1/2 c all-purpose flour, plus 1 c reserved for additional flouring

Process

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.
Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour.

Turn dough out onto a clean, well-floured surface, and knead in more flour liberally until the dough is no longer sticky. Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth. Let the dough rise until double; this should take about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 425°.

Punch down the dough, and form a tight ball. Allow the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Roll the dough thin, and get rid of any extra rather than trying to cram it onto your baking surface; making this too thick will make it bad. If you’re baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it. If you’re baking the dough on a pizza stone, simply top and bake immediately. Bake until crust is golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

**my mom sold her house and moved onto a boat