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This is exactly that. The crust has a crunch on the outside with a soft inside so it holds up well with toppings. Additionally, this recipe only makes 1 pizza dough so it feeds our family of 3 perfectly.
If you have more people or you want leftover pizza the recipe is easy to double. I sometimes will double the recipe so I can freeze dough for another pizza. One of these days when I have the freezer space I will likely freeze several doughs at a time or enough for 3 months.
How to Freeze Pizza Dough
Follow the directions to make the dough as per usual. Once you’ve let the dough rest for 5 minutes, coat the ball of dough in olive oil. Put the ball in a gallon freezer bag, squeeze out the air and freeze for up to 3 months.
To defrost simply place the dough in the fridge the night before and let it defrost. Then let the dough sit out near the oven for 30 minutes as you preheat the oven for baking the pizza. Stretch and top your pizza as per instructions below.
Using Up Pizza Sauce
We do not use a lot of pizza sauce on our pizzas, for now we buy the jarred pizza sauce. I have found that I can split that jar into 4ths and freeze extra sauce for pizza at a later time. This stops food waste and 1 jar will last us for a month or two in pizzas for the house.
One day I will make my own pizza sauce from scratch and when I do I will likely can it in 4 oz jars since we don’t use a lot of sauce on our pizzas. That will likely sauce two pizzas which will be enough once my son reaches teenage years and needs a whole pizza to himself.
Toppings Tips
When you are making homemade pizza you can get as creative as you want with your toppings. However, I highly recommend cooking all of your meat toppings before adding them to your pizza with this particular dough recipe.
One, it allows you to remove any cooking grease. Two, you know that your meat is cooked and your dough isn’t overcooked.
A fun thing you can do is set up a topping bar and let the family decide what toppings they want on their parts of the pizza. So I’m an extra cheese, veggies and bacon, my son is a cheese only, my husband loves sausage, chicken, and veggies. We’d all get what we want on our pizza and leftover toppings work great in wraps, over rice, or on additional pizza if you freeze the toppings for later use.
Or you can do what I did with the Italian sausage, pepper, and onion pizza pictured below and use the extra toppings to make a casserole. The toppings went great with sweet potatoes, cheese, and topped with scrambled eggs for a delicious breakfast bake the next day.
Quick and Easy Pizza Dough
Below is my recipe for my quick and easy pizza dough. This dough has a nice crunch on the outside with a good soft and bread like texture inside the crust. I make about 12’’ pizzas but I have small pans like this. You can easily make a larger pizza and spread out the dough more.
Ingredients:
- 2 ¼ tsp Active Dry Yeast
- 1 tsp Sugar
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 2 tbs olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 450F. Dissolve 2 ¼ tsp yeast and 1 tsp sugar in 1 cup of warm to the touch water in a mixing bowl of your stand mixer. Let it sit for 10 minutes or until it blooms.
- Stir in 2 ½ cups of flour, 1 tsp of salt, and 2 tbs olive oil. Mix with the dough hook attachment until the dough is smooth. Let your dough rest for about 5 minutes.
- Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat and stretch into a round roughly the size of your pizza pan.
- Lightly grease your pizza pan with butter or vegetable shortening and if you would like you can sprinkle a bit of cornmeal on to the sheet. Transfer the dough to the pan, adjust the dough as needed to fit the pan.
- Top with sauce and toppings of choice and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is gold and bubbly.
Easy Pizza Dough
Easy pizza dough is a must have on hand when you don’t want to spend the money on delivery but really want to enjoy a pizza. Additionally, this dough is more filling than what you typically get from delivery.
You can feed your family, save some money, and if you double the recipe you’ll likely have leftovers for lunch the next day.
What are your favorite pizza toppings? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite dinner boards.
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