pizza dough

Making homemade pizza is definitely more time-consuming than popping a frozen pie in the oven, but once you taste your homemade creations, you may never go back to the store-bought varieties. Even if you’ve never made dough from scratch, you’ll quickly get the hang of it.

1 .25-oz. package active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
3 cups flour, divided (plus extra for dusting)

2 14-inch pizza pans, greased with olive oil, or a pizza stone

1. In a large bowl, add warm water to yeast and sugar. Set aside for about 5 minutes. In the meantime, grease a medium-size bowl with olive oil. Add olive oil, salt, and 2 3/4 cups flours to yeast mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until combined and dough pulls away from side of bowl.

2. Sprinkle flour over a work surface; slowly incorporate remaining 1/4 cup flour and knead dough until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). If dough sticks to your fingers, slowly add more flour.

3. Place dough ball in greased bowl; turn to coat. Cover with a clean dish towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free area until doubled in size. (I like to heat the oven on a warm setting while I prepare the dough. When the dough is ready to rise, I turn off the oven and place the covered bowl in the oven, leaving the door ajar.)

4. Divide dough in half and roll out on a floured work surface. Fit dough into prepared pizza pans. Cover with pizza sauce and your favorite toppings. Bake at 450° for about 15 minutes or until the bottom of the crust is lightly browned and toppings are thoroughly cooked (you may want to switch to the broiler setting for the last few minutes of baking to thoroughly cook the toppings). Pass out the napkins and enjoy!