Thursday, July 2, 2009

Tatiana's Amazing Pizza!


Although I've made plenty of my own creations, I have never named anything after myself, and I must admit, I'm blushing a little. I would put my name on this pizza any day though. It is literally the most amazing thing I've ever tasted. I am a big pizza-lover.

There are a LOT of pictures in this recipe because I wanted to give you lucky people a "step-by-step" through pics. I am a very visual person and I refuse to make any recipe (online or in a book) if it doesn't have a photo. I know, I should probably loosen that rule up since I'm trying like a bajillion recipes for this blog. In the future, I'd really like to make a video recipe...

Tatiana's Amazing Pizza (makes 2 pizzas, only one is pictured in examples)

1 cup warm (almost hot) tap water
1 tbsp active dry yeast

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour for kneading and rolling the dough
1 tbsp salt
1 tsbp sugar


Step 1: Combine the warm/hot water and the active dry yeast. Stir a little, but let it sit for 10 to 15 min. After it sits, it should look like so:

Step 2: Combine your flour, sugar, and salt. Make a "hole" in the middle of the bowl for the yeast mixture. Add the mixture and stir gently with a spoon.


Step 3: Combine them and then get ready to knead the dough a little. BEFORE you do, have your 1/2 cup flour "ready". Sometimes, if I the dough is really sticky, I ask my little helper (my 9 year old son) to pour 1 tbsp of oil onto my hands while I'm kneading. Also, a big thanks to my son for taking some of these pictures since my hands were all doughy. It should look kinda like a blob at this point:



Step 4: After the dough starts to come together and it's not super sticky anymore, put it back into the bowl and let it rest for ONE HOUR. Cover with a dark hand towel.


Step 5: After it sits, pre-heat your oven to 400. Important: Cut the dough in HALF. This recipe makes two pizzas. I made a cheese which is below, and a veggie, which is at the beginning. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough into the right shape. Also, poke holes in it with a fork so that the air bubbles don't distort the pizza.


Step 6: Cook the crust at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Step 7: Take it out, add the ingredients and put back into the oven. I usually raise the temp to 450 when I put it back in so it cooks faster. It takes 10-15 minutes to cook depending on how many toppings you have and what type of cheese you use.

Voila. Done.
Last picture is a shout out to the vegan cheese that I use. It's really awesome! Cheese was probably the only thing I felt really sad to give up as a vegan, but this has more than made up for it. It's delicious, and it's much healthier. Loves it!

4 comments:

The Voracious Vegan said...

Gorgeous pizza! I love the golden crust and the ooey gooey vegan cheese. Yum!

Jennifer M. said...

This looks SO good!! I just bookmarked this and my husband and I are going to try it this weekend. Thanks for posting!

Jennifer M. said...

Okay, we've made this pizza crust FOUR TIMES in the last week! It's so good! The only problem is that my Vegan Gourmet cheese doesn't melt like yours did. Do you have any secret to making it melt like that?

tc said...

You are right, Vegan Gourmet does NOT melt all that well, but I did find a way to help it along:

Place the grated cheese in a bowl before adding to the pizza, and microwave it for 10-15 seconds... on LOW. Apparently, Vegan Gourmet cheese has a very high melting temp, so warming it up helps. Also, while baking the crust I usually place the (porcelain) bowl on the stove so that it receives some of the oven heat...

There used to be another cheese at my local supermarket that melted WAY better but it's gone.

Hope that helped!