Homemade Pizza and YES! It's almost round!

There's a few places I love to get pizza from. Rotolo's in Grandview is worth the trip. They don't have inside seating, so we eat in the parking lot while it's still piping hot! Those perfect little crispy-edged pepperoni, curled up and filled with grease - heaven! Fracasso's in Center Village has a patio and a dining room - oh, and BEER! I'm fond of Pizza Burg in Centerburg even though they use a conveyor oven.

I prefer the old school places that still have a real pizza oven - stone baked at about 500 degrees so the crust pops and crisps quickly. We lined our ovens with unglazed quarry tiles two years ago and never looked back. I leave them in the oven full-time. It doesn't affect the pan baking in any way.

We love pizza night. No, I mean the nights that we make our own. The tiles in our ovens at 500 degrees make a crust we love and the pizzas are done in about 7-8 minutes.

After I originally wrote the recipe for the sauce, I changed my method a little bit. Rather than adding the balsamic vinegar with the tomato sauce, I use it to deglaze the pan after sauteing the onions and garlic. Well, this time I used shallots - because I can.

Isn't this gorgeous sausage? We bought the house grind at Carfagna's. I had to let Harry go a little crazy with the seasonings to give it more of an Italian flavor.

 This is the closest I've ever gotten to making pizzas that were actually round. I've tried everything - and trust me, you don't want to ever see me trying to throw a crust in the air. We used a pressing method this time - Harry squeezed the dough between two round cake pans and that gave me a good start.

Mmmmm....pizza sauce! As I worked, putting on the ingredients, the crust continued to relax a bit and I was able to smooth out the parchment paper.

 We love lots of cheese and put on a thin layer just above the sauce to help everything stick together.

Remember the carnivore? Yes, we must have lots of pepperoni.

I like onion on my pizza. I try not to force Harry to eat too many vegetables with his pizza, so it's a rare occasion that I might throw on some green olives or fresh tomato slices.

And Harry's special-seasoned sausage. There's one pizza joint that we like but we can't order sausage for our pie there. They always put it on top, the cheese is on the bottom and you always lose the sausage.

So - to save our sausage, we always put the cheese on top. Lots of cheese. No, I didn't shred this myself because I was being slightly lazy. 

Now - how good does that look? No we didn't eat three pizzas in one night. The leftovers were breakfast and midnight snacks for Harry for a few days!

This crust recipe really is a breeze. It's important to let it rest for at least an hour to make it easier to work with. When Allison came home for the holidays, I made the crust and sauce and browned the sausage before we headed to the airport and kept it all in the fridge. Works like a dream.

Follow the link for Easy Homemade Pizza Crust and Sauce

For the price, this is a decent stone. Oh, and don't buy one of those fancy-schmancy wooden pizza peels. I have a restaurant-size stainless steel pizza peel that I picked up at Wasserstrom's for about $12.