Sam Wants To Know...

"It's Me, Sam" says that she is going to be making pizza this weekend after being inspired by my previous post. She wanted to know how to make our crust and well, we like to share. This recipe is our adaptation of one found in "The Canadian Living Cookbook" published in 1987. This a great cookbook and some of our favourite dishes start out from there.

Basic Pizza Dough

1 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg active dry yeast (1 tbsp)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsps liquid honey (optional)

In a large bowl, dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast into water and let stand for 10 minutes or until foamy. Fresh yeast works best. Meanwhile, in a seperate bowl, combine flour and salt.

Stir oil and the beaten egg into the yeast mixture. If you're using the honey add it to the wet ingredients now. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry mix and stir with a fork until the dough can be gathered together into a sticky ball. You may need slightly more or less flour than the 3 cups.

On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic. At this point we put the dough in a plastic bag and put the bag in a warm place for an hour or so. The original recipe says that the dough will be ready after about 10 minutes but we like to let it rest a little longer.

After rolling out the dough and transferring to your greased and floured pans let it rest again fo a short time. Makes enough for two 12 inch pizza pans or cookie sheets.

We doubled the recipe for last weekend and everything worked out great. That was easier than making a single recipe two times.