i made a good homemade pizza – yay!

I’ve lamented about my lack of ability to make good crusts in any form. I haven’t had a lot of experiences with crusts in general, from pizza doughs to pie crusts. My past experiences have been frustrating, but you only accomplish things by practice and patience. I didn’t actually make this pizza dough, but I’ve been attempting to make pizza on an almost weekly basis, determined to find the right way to cook the crust just the way I like it – slightly crisp, cooked all the way through, no thin parts, and slightly chewy.

Jake and son have kindly been through my attempts at pizza making. Luckily they will eat whatever I make, even if I think it sucks. And trust me, I have made some bad pizza. They would tell you otherwise, but I don’t know if that’s because they’re being nice or not.

In any case, last night I made this!

It’s a meatball pizza and boy was it tasty.

Here’s my ingredients and recommendations to make crispy chewy homemade pizza yourself. Though, I didn’t really make a lot of stuff from scratch, I still consider it homemade since I had to roll the dough out myself. That takes some work, let me tell you!

Homemade Meatball Pizza

• 1 pizza dough (I usually buy the dough from either Trader Joe’s or Fresh n Easy)
• Pasta sauce (homemade or store bought, your choice)
• Lots of cheese (I used mozzarella, a 3 cheese blend from Trader Joe’s with romano, parmasan and asiago shavings and dollops of ricotta cheese)
• Turkey meatballs (again, from Trader Joe’s – do you see a trend?)
• Fresh basil

The dough rest at room temperature for about 20 minutes.Set your oven for 450 degrees. Prep your pizza pan with a little drizzle of olive oil. Cook the meatballs so they are warm and heated through (I just pan cooked them in a little olive oil until crispy and hot).

When your dough has warmed up a but, get a little bit of flour onto the dough so it’s not crazy sticky in your hands. You can roll it out with a rolling pin if you like, but I usually just slowly stretch it out with my hands. Try to make the middle not too thin! I hold it in the air and stretch it out and then put it on the pan and then stretch it a little further. Don’t try and make it too big either, that’ll just thin it out too much. Use a fork to spear the dough many times – this prevents the dough from bubbling up in the oven. Drizzle with a little more olive oil.

When the oven’s ready, pre-bake the crust in the oven for about 8 minutes. It won’t be done all of the way and it will not have browned yet at this point.

Place your ingredients onto the halfway baked crust – sauce it up, add lots of cheese and the meatballs. Place in the oven, middle rack. Check in on it in about 10 minutes. The crust should be brown and crispy – if not, just give it a few more minutes until it looks like it’s done all the way through. Broil the top if you want the cheese super bubbly.

After it comes out of the oven, sprinkle with fresh basil and serve. Yummy, yum!