I've heard people say interesting things about home cookin' . The best of these is "you know, it's really not that much harder to make the stuff at home." Well, maybe. I can tell you that's not true with pizza. It's a complete pain in the ass to make really good homemade pizza. It's very messy, very time-consuming, and even fairly expensive. Gotta tell you, tho: there's nothing like it.
Notes:
You're welcome to make the sauce from fresh tomatoes. If that level of hassle is fine with you, knock yourself out. Making the sauce from canned tomatoes is enough of a hassle for me, personally.
You really shouldn't use pre-grated cheese. It's dry and flavorless. Buy packaged mozarella and Parmesean and grate it yourself. You'll need a few supplies for this: box grater, bandages, gauze, antiseptic ointment, etc. Get used to not bending a few knuckles while the scabs are healing.
I really do recommend getting a pizza stone for your oven. The crust comes out crispy and just orders of magnitude better.
The sauce is thick and it will bubble aggresively as it simmers. A word to the wise: cover it while it simmers, stir it often, and cover your hand 'cuz it does superheat.
Making pizza is a long job but for the most part it's not particularly hard work. The one really difficult part: getting the pizza from your cabinet top to the oven. If you make the pizza on a pan, problem solved, but your crust won't be as good. If you're using a stone, you can't make it on the stone so you'll need to transfer the raw dough to the oven. My advise: get a large wooden cutting board or marble rolling stone (I have both: nya, nyah) and smother that puppy with flour and or cornmeal. You can ruin your pizza while transfering it to the stone, so take care!
I wouldn't go too crazy on the toppings. Yeah, I like a lot of stuff too, but subtle is better for pizza toppings. Besides, the pizza does need to cook, and if you have 7 pounds of toppings your pizza's gonna come out undercooked.
Dough Stuff:
4+ cups of flour
1 1/2 t dry active yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup olive oil
1 t salt
Sauce Stuff:
28 oz. can of tomatoes (try to get Italian style tomatoes)
Garlic (3 - 8 cloves depending on your lust for garlic), pounded to a paste
1/4 cup olive oil
fresh herbs to your taste (basil, oregano, thyme, sage) or dry if you insist
1/2 t salt
Topping Stuff:
8 - 16 oz mozarella cheese, grated
2 T Parmesean cheese, grated
Other stuff (ham, onions, mushrooms, tomato slices, banana peels, old VCR parts, etc.)
Make the dough first. Proof the yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm water. Add the rest of the water, oil, and salt and mix together. Add most of the yeast and stir it until it's mixed. Knead the flour until it's firm but not to stiff (lightly tacky is ideal). Let rise for 1+ hours. Dump all the sauce stuff into a pan and simmer it for at least 30 minutes. Let the sauce cool to tepid before putting on the pizza dough.
Heat the oven to 500 degrees. If you're using a stone, allow that stone to sit in the hot oven at least 25 minutes before cooking the pizza.
Squeeze all the air bubbles out of the dough, then roll out the dough to accommodate the pan or stone you're using. Make sure you roll the dough evenly and there are no tears in it. Put as much of the sauce as you like on it evenly and to within 1/2 an inch of the edge of the crust. Put 2/3 of the grated moz cheese over the sauce; put the meat/veg/etc. toppings on the cheese, then put the rest of the moz cheese. Top the stuff with the Parmesean.
Put the pizza in the oven and bake for 8 minutes. Check the bottom; if it's hard and light golden brown, it's done. If you're using a stone, take the stone and the pizza out together. Let the pizza cool on the stone for 2 minutes before cutting to let the cheese harden a little.
This pizza is killer. Make it often. I do! The sauce gets better with time, so make extra sauce and just make new crusts later. You're welcome to use Boboli or other wheat frisbees if you like, but don't tell me if you do.
