EASY Homemade Pizza x4

This quick and easy homemade pizza recipe will have your family enjoying pizza in no time! This quick rise recipe makes 4 LARGE 16″ pizzas, with a thick pan style crust. This will feed an army… which is what I feed on a regular basis.

Ingredients you will need for the crust are flour, quick rise dry yeast, sugar, salt, water, and oil. For toppings, you will need a jar of marinara or pasta sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and sausage. Obviously, pizza can be made with almost any toppings you desire. See below for other ideas!

There is no need to dissolve the yeast in water, and this pizza dough does not need to rise for hours. When I’m in a really big hurry, I let it rest for 15 minutes before I roll it out. When I have a few more minutes to spare, I let it rest for 30 minutes, usually on the stove top while the oven is preheating. The heat from the oven makes it raise faster.

Instructions

Mix dry ingredients together first, including yeast. Then add water and oil. Using a candy thermometer to measure water temp, heat water to between 120 and 125 degrees F. (For me, that is almost too hot to put my finger, but not quite! Once you get a feel for how hot the water should be, you can cheat and use your finger instead of a thermometer. )

The dough hook on a stand mixer is ideal for mixing up and kneading dough. If you don’t have one, use a wooden spoon to stir. If your dough feels too stiff, add some more water a few tablespoons at a time until the consistency is right. Or if your dough is a gooey mess, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. Then turn out dough onto a floured surface to knead, just until a well incorporated dough is achieved. You do not want a stiff dough, it needs to be soft and easy to work with.

Return dough to bowl and let rise in a warm place for 15 to 30 minutes until nearly doubled. While dough is rising, brown and crumble sausage in a skillet on the stove.

Next, divide dough into thirds, and roll out into circles to fit your pans. After dough is on pizza pans or stones, spread with marinara. I use a jar of pasta sauce, not pizza sauce. Aldi’s traditional marinara is a great choice. Pizza sauce just comes in a smaller jar and costs more. I find that some people like a lot of sauce and some people like less. My husband doesn’t like a lot of sauce, so I use about 2/3 of a cup for each pizza. You can use a more, but you don’t want so much that it runs off of your pizza while baking!

Next top with about 3 cups of shredded mozzarella. Of course, you can add any other cheeses you want as well. Sometimes I add grated parmesan, cubed cream cheese, and even pepper jack.

Lastly, add toppings! In this case, sausage and pepperoni. (Last night when we made this, we put sausage and pepperoni on 2 pizzas, left 1 pizza plain cheese, and made 1 cherry dessert pizza.) Below this recipe are some of our family favorite specialties.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, rotating pizzas top rack to bottom rack and vise versa halfway through.

Variations

Copycat T-Guns Pizza– marinara, mozzarella, cubed cream cheese, sliced jalapenos, sliced tomatoes, spinach leaves, and pepperoni

Hawaiian Pizza– marinara, mozzarella, Canadian Bacon and sliced pineapple

3 Meat Pizza– marinara, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, and bacon

Supreme Pizza– marinara, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, chopped green pepper, and chopped onion

Taco Pizza– refried beans (instead of marinara), ground beef, shredded colby jack, and add lettuce, tomato, and salsa AFTER baking

Bacon and Pepper Jack Pizza– marinara, pepper jack cheese, cooked crumbled bacon, and sliced jalapenos

Cherry Dessert Pizza– can of cherry pie filling, then cut 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup oatmeal. 1/2 cup flour, into 4 Tbsp butter. Sprinkle this crumble on top, and dot with another 4 Tbsp of butter. We did this last night, it was so good!