Monday's Menu

I'm always looking for ways to make our Friday pizza nights a little more yummy. Last time, I got the craving for a pan pizza so I set out looking for a pan crust. I found this recipe that included an alfredo topping. It sounds really good actually but I was only interested in the crust at the time.

This is probably about as basic a crust as you can get. It only has 4 ingredients and works like any typical bread dough. For that reason (and also because the alfredo is where they expect the flavor to come from) it also tastes pretty basic.

If you're looking for a flavorful dough that you can eat by itself, this isn't the one for you. But, if, like ours, you want a good foundation that will soak up all the flavoring of the toppings and still hold its own, this might be what you want.

I usually have to ask Hubby what he thinks or I might get one comment about it. In this case though, he repeated a few times just how good this was. And threatened the potential leftover eaters. And, honestly, I thought it was pretty great too.

Again, if you want the dough to have its own wonderful flavor, you will either want to add some herbs and seasoning or try a different recipe. But since most pizza toppings can be kind of greasy, I didn't think this would be an issue for us.

Also, I used my bread machine successfully to make this dough. The original did not have bread machine instructions but because it is a basic bread dough, it worked out fine.

So try it out.

Deep Dish Pizza Crust

1 cup warm water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (1 pkt)
2 cups flour

Mix together water, oil, and yeast. Stir in the flour. Roll into a ball and place in well-oiled bowl. Allow to rise 1 hour or until double in bulk.

Grease a deep dish pizza pan or cake pan. Punch down dough and transfer to pan. Cover with clean cloth and allow to rise 25 minutes, until puffy.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spread sauce and toppings over crust. Bake 35 minutes until lightly browned.

Note: I generally par-bake the crust before putting toppings on. That is, I place the crust only into the oven and allow it to cook just until the shape is set but not long enough to be cooked through or browned so that it has a head start before piling on toppings that may keep it from baking through. This also allows me to reduce the cook time for the whole pizza somewhat so I don't end up with a partially cooked or burnt end result.