Tammy's Recipes

A  tasty homemade crust topped with all your favorite toppings.

For pizza crust:

1 c warm water
1 t salt
3 c flour
1 T dry yeast

Here are some of our choice toppings:

Homemade pizza sauce
Green peppers, diced
Red onions, sliced and then cut into halves, put on last
Turkey pepperoni
Turkey pastrami, cut into small pieces and sprinkled on
Turkey bacon, cut into bits and fried first
Ground beef, fried with onions and crumbled
Feta cheese, crumbled
Parmesan cheese
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Crushed red pepper

1. Put crust ingredients into bread machine in order listed. Set to dough setting and begin.

2. After about 30 minutes, you should have a nice dough. Turn off breadmachine (unless you started really early and want to let it do the entire dough setting, which includes an --optional for pizza crust-- second rise) and remove your dough.

3. Grease your cookie sheet/s (I like to use two 10.5" x 15" jelly roll pans), divide dough, and using a little flour, roll out into crust. Put dough onto sheets and cover with a towel. Set in a warm place (I like to turn on the oven for a minute or two, then turn off, and set inside). Let rise about 25-35 minutes, depending on how fluffy you want your crust to be.

4. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Bake crusts for 7-10 minutes, depending on how thick you made them and how crispy or soft you like your pizza crust. This is just a pre-bake, to ensure a nice, fully-cooked pizza crust.

5. While crust is baking, chop green peppers and onions, shred cheese, open sauce, prepare meat, etc. When crust has baked (don't let it get too browned though!) remove from oven. Put sauce, cheese, and toppings on, and then bake for 20 more minutes. Enjoy!

From the time I start the crust until the pizza is finished, it's usually at least 2 hours. However, I would guess my actual time spent working on it is only 25-30 minutes.

We like to put our ingredients on in this order: sauce, crushed red pepper, feta cheese, parmesan cheese, mozzarella cheese, meat, and onions. Having some toppings put on after the mozzarella cheese gives them a delicious slightly-dried, crispy texture.

This recipe makes one large thick round crust, two medium-thin rectangular crusts (10.5 x 15 inch), or whatever variety and sizes of pans you have :).

You can also prepare the crusts and pre-bake. Allow to cool and cover with plastic wrap. Freeze for later use. It's so easy to make a quick pizza when you can just pull the crust out of the freezer and top!

I rated this recipe 10/10, because it's a consistently tasty way to prepare pizza. We've experimented a lot with crust thicknesses, crust recipes, and topping orders, and always come back to this crust recipe. Having a bread machine makes it a snap to mix, too!