Homemade Pizza Take Two

Remember my first attempt at making homemade pizza? Yeah, that was a little bit of a disaster. But, I learned a few things from that experience, and was ready to try my hand at it again. This time I used a crust recipe that came with my new mixture, so it was super easy and straightforward. The only uncertain part of the pizza was the toppings--the meat I was intending to use had spoiled, so I had to throw something together at the last minute sans recipe. The result? A pretty tasty pizza if I do say so myself.

Crusty Pizza Dough
(recipe included with my KitchenAid Mixer)

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp cornmeal

Dissolve yeast in warm water in warmed mixer bowl. Add salt, olive oil, and 2 1/2 cup flour. Attach bowl and PowerKnead Dough Hook to mixer. Turn to speed 2 and mix about 1 minute. Continuing on speed 2, add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, and mix about 1 1/2 minutes, or until dough starts to clean sides of bowl. Knead on speed 2 about 2 minutes longer. Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover. Let rise in warm place, free from draft, about 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk. Punch dough down.
Brush 14" pizza pan with oil. Sprinkle with cornmeal. Press dough across bottom of pan, forming a collar around edge to hold toppings.

So far so good! I actually used a pizza pan this time instead of trying to transfer to my pizza stone

Add toppings as desired. For me, this is where things started to get a little uncertain--I had some ranch dressing that needed to get used, as well as a yellow pepper, and I was planning to do some sort of Philly Cheesesteak pizza. Until I discovered that my steak had spoiled. So, I took inventory of my kitchen and came up with this:

Diced (cooked) bacon, diced tomato, garlic, diced yellow pepper, sauteed together slightly and spread onto the crust which had been topped with a thin layer of ranch. I threw a little cheese on there, baked it at 450* for about 20 minutes, and viola!

Pizza goodness. I was a little concerned that the cheese was darkening significantly more than the crust and was worried that the crust would be under-baked, but it came out perfectly crispy. And my haphazard topping was pretty tasty as well. Definitely something that I'd consider playing around with again in the future--especially the idea of using some ranch in place of or in addition to a tomato sauce. Yum yum.

Coming up this week--a finished (!!!) patio and the cutest birthday girl ever!