Absolutely Easy Pizza Dough

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Pizza. It’s one of those universal things that everyone just loves. In my opinion, anyone who doesn’t at least like pizza cannot be trusted. There’s melty cheese and warm crispy bread and sauce- like what is there not to love? And then there’s the utter accessibility. You can order a pizza and have it delivered to you as you drink a couple glasses of wine and watch love affairs gone wrong on the ID channel. No drinking and driving. It just comes to you. It’s just so convenient.

But one snowy day, pizza delivery failed me. One glass of wine into a Wives with Knives marathon, I attempted to order a quick pizza and was rejected. “Sorry ma’am, we’re not delivering due to inclement weather.” Excuse me? This is winter in Detroit. There’s always inclement weather. Unacceptable.  I was forced to stomp into the kitchen and make my own.

In retrospect the pizza man did me a huge favor. Otherwise I might have never known how absolutely easy it was to make my own! Whip together a quick dough, smatter it with sauce and toppings of your choosing, and you’re good to go. These days I make pizzas at home constantly. It’s cheaper per serving, almost faster than delivery, and to be totally honest, it makes me feel kind of fancy. This recipe makes enough dough for two ten inch pizzas. Be cool and learn to make pizza dough. You’ll thank yourself later.

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What You’ll Need:

¾ cup of warm, almost hot water
A teaspoon of instant yeast
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons of salt
A tablespoon of honey

What To Do:

To make a really good pizza, you need to get your oven as hot as it can possibly go. Pizza chefs work with ovens as high as 800 degrees. 500 will do for those of us at home with standard ovens.  You also want to make sure your oven heats for about a half an hour.

Now combine your “warm almost hot” water, honey, and yeast in mixing bowl and give it a little stir to combine. The warm water helps the yeast to activate. Let it sit for about five minutes.

Go ahead and add the salt and flour to the bowl, and give it a mix. You can totally use a wooden spoon, but of course I used my stand mixer. (Unless it’s totally necessary, I pretty much hate exerting any extra energy.) And look at that! Your dough has come together! It looks kind of shaggy and weird right now, but you’re on the right track.

Turn the dough out onto a clean, lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth. It’ll still feel moist and a little sticky, that’s what you want. But if it’s sticking to your hands and the counter, sprinkle in a little flour about a tablespoon at a time as you knead. 

You’re pretty much done! If you have time, lightly oil another bowl, plop it in, cover it, and let it rise for about an hour. If you don’t feel like waiting, no worries. This recipe is super versatile. Moving on.

Now here’s the fun part. Cut the dough in two. Using a rolling pin, or a glass, or the even the heel of your hand, work one of the balls of dough into your ideal pizza shape. I prefer rolling it out to about a quarter inch thickness.

Place your disk of dough on your pizza pan, sheet pan, parchment paper, whatever, and top with your favorite sauce and toppings. I typically do a marinara, slices of fresh mozzarella, and whatever veggies I might have on hand.  Click here for my easy peasy Pasta Sauce 101 post for sauce options!

Now throw that baby in the oven and let it bake until the edges are golden brown and crispy. Take it out the oven. You did it. You made a pizza!

Pasta Sauce 101

I first started cooking in undergrad, with a self-mandated, weekly grocery budget of forty dollars. Yup. Forty whole dollars. And like any other college student, my staple meal was what else? Spaghetti. Spaghetti made with jars upon jars of processed pasta sauce. Looking back on my years of spaghetti consumption, I realize that it didn’t have to be that way.

Homemade sauce is not only easy and customizable, but also much better for us than the canned stuff. A handful of simple ingredients always trumps stumbling over scary, unrecognizable ones on the back of a Preggo can. Although I can't deny that until pretty recently, I have enjoyed  those cans of Preggo. No shade. But we grow!

I work with three basic sauces. A marinara, an alfredo, and lovely mix of the two- a creamy marinara. They’re also all very versatile- ever tried a white lasagna? It’s fabulous. Of course they take a little more time than cracking open a premade jar, but isn’t the extra fifteen minutes worth it? These no fail sauces are the basis of tons of my regular recipes.

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Basic Marinara Sauce

8 oz can of tomato sauce
8 oz can of crushed tomatoes (if you’re into a chunkier sauce)
A medium diced onion
Couple of cloves of minced garlic
A dash of red pepper flakes
Dried oregano
Dried basil
About a tablespoon of sugar
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil

Over medium heat, sauté red pepper flakes, oregano, and basil in olive oil for about a minute to release their flavor. Add onion and garlic, sauté until they soften and your kitchen smells like heaven. Side note: be careful here not to let your garlic burn! Burnt garlic is terribly bitter, and that bitterness can ruin your sauce.

Once the garlic and onion have softened, go ahead and add your can of tomato sauce and give everything a stir. (Add diced tomatoes if you so choose here). Allow the sauce to come to a soft boil (you’ll know when it starts to bubble). Once it does, turn it down to low and allow it to simmer.

At this point, you can give the sauce a taste and determine how you want to proceed. Salt, pepper, and sugar are all a preferential thing. But I always add the tablespoon of sugar to balance the acidity of all the tomato. It doesn’t make the sauce sweet, just rounds everything out.  

Alfredo Sauce

Couple of cloves of minced garlic
Couple tablespoons of flour
A cup of milk (have a little more on hand in case the sauce gets a bit thick toward the end)
½ cup of shredded or shaved parmesan
Dried oregano
Dried basil
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil or butter
Teaspoon of lemon juice (optional)

Like the marinara recipe, sauté the oregano, and basil in the olive oil or butter for about a minute over medium heat. Add and garlic sauté until it softens, and once again, your kitchen smells like heaven.

Now we’re going to make a rue. Don’t be scared! It’s simple stuff. Lightly sprinkle the flour into the garlicky olive oil, a tablespoon at a time. Whisk the flour into the oil- it will thicken into a paste. Look, you made a rue!

Slowly whisk the milk into the rue, breaking up the paste. Make sure to distribute the rue throughout the milk, and not to leave any weird flour lumps. Turn down the heat to low.

Go ahead and sprinkle the parmesan into the beautifully smooth sauce you’ve created. Sprinkle it bit by bit, giving it a stir. If using lemon juice, you can add that now. I find that it brightens what’s undoubtedly a super rich sauce. Season with salt and pepper. If the sauce gets a bit too thick for your liking, add an additional splash of milk until it reaches your desired consistency. Just make sure to salt and pepper accordingly.

Tomato Cream Sauce

8 oz can of tomato sauce
A medium diced onion
Couple of cloves of minced garlic
A dash of red pepper flakes
Dried oregano
Dried basil
About a tablespoon of sugar
½ cup of heavy cream
Salt & pepper
Couple tablespoons of olive oil

Prepare classic marinara sauce as described above. At the end, add the heavy cream and give it a good stir. Boom, tomato cream sauce.

Remember, these sauces are subjective. If you want a chunky sauce, add the crushed tomatoes. Spicier sauce? Amp it up with more red pepper flakes. Make them your own! You might never stop at the sauce section in your local grocery store again.

Perfect Roast Chicken

Perfecting one essential recipe was arguably my tipping point between “girl who cooks” and domestic goddess. And it’s arguably one of the easiest recipes to master, so we can all be goddesses at our own houses! A cute little roasted chicken is not only delicious, but also insanely simple to make, and makes a really impressive centerpiece. Until you carve it, of course.

After several trials, (and more than several errors), I've come to two fail proof conclusions. All that’s really important when roasting the perfect chicken is hardware and oven temperature. A shallow roasting pan and an oven heated to a dazzling 425 degrees always renders the perfect result to me. The shallow pan and high heat allows for even roasting, while the chicken doesn’t end up soaked in its own juices. There’s just the perfect amount of au jus to make a nice sauce if you want, but not so much that the skin isn’t able to crisp nicely. Because crispy skin is all that’s really important, right?

You can truss the chicken if you like. Stuff a quarted lemon, onion, or herb bundle into the bird’s cavity. All things to step the recipe up a notch. But here’s just my bare bones, perfect roast chicken recipe.

What you’ll need:

A shallow roasting pan
Twine (optional)
A cute little chicken (Somewhere between 4 and 6 pounds is more than enough to feed my hungry little family)
Olive oil
Salt, Pepper, whatever additional seasonings you prefer
Optional lemon or herb bundle

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 425. Get it nice and hot, your chicken wants you to!

Rinse the chicken and remove any innards from the cavity. Pat dry with paper towels. If you’re in the trussing mood, now’s the time to do it.

Place the chicken in the roasting pan, and give it a good rub down with a couple tablespoons of good olive oil. Olive oil + hot oven = crispy deliciousness.

Season liberally with salt, pepper, and whatever additional seasoning you prefer. Get jazzy with it! Herbs de Provence is sure to set it off with minimal effort.

Now just slap it into the oven, uncovered. Give it about forty minutes, depending on the size of the chicken. To check for doneness, make a little slice between the thigh and leg area. If the juices run clear, you’re good to go.  

Voila! You’re a domestic goddess.