I mean seriously who doesn’t love pizza? Growing up as kids we always looked forward to Friday night pizza after a long week of cooking homemade delish meals it was a good way to give my mom a night off from cooking.  It also helped that our hometown has an Italian pizza shop on pretty much every corner so there were lots of options!  Pizza is one of my husbands all-time favorite meals I swear he could live on cheese pizza alone, but since we have been moving all over we realized how hard it is to find a decent slice!  When we lived in Washington the only place we found homemade pizza was at the Nordstrom Cafe in the Tacoma mall of all places they seriously have the best food there!

For a while we ended up trying to make our own with the store bought crust that comes in a can and it was good but didn’t taste the real deal.  So I decided that I was going to try and make dough from scratch and turns out its really pretty simple! You can use this recipe for foccacia bread which is amazing or bake a loaf bread.  The great thing is that it’s so simple you can flavor it however you want.  You could use garlic oil, rosemary, or Italian seasonings and they all work wonderfully!

Recipe

1 Packet Rapid Highly Active Yeast

4c Unbleached All Purpose Flour

1/2c Olive Oil (I use Garlic infused)

1/2c Warm Water

1t Sugar (I use Truvia)

1 Salt

Seasonings of your choice

Directions:

1. First you want to take your yeast packet and warm water and combine them with the sugar to activate the yeast.  Do this in a separate glass cup or small bowl and wait until it gets really frothy looking.  If your yeast doesn’t work for some reason you can just start over without wasting all of the flour.  Make sure the water is warm to the touch but not scalding hot!
2. I use my Kitchen Aide mixer with the dough hook to combine the rest of the ingredients.  Put the flour, oil, salt, and yeast mixture in and slowly mix until it forms a smooth ball.
3. Leave in the mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a clean dish towel and put in the microwave or any non-drafty place to let it rise for about and hour.
4. Remove the dough and place in your bread loaf, a sheet pan for foccacia, or shape into large circle on a floured surface for pizza!
5. A helpful tip is to lightly flour a large flat pan and spread the dough out so you won’t risk ripping the dough to move it into the oven.
6. Top with anything you like! For us its spinach and garlic for me (vegan friendly option) and plain sauce and cheese for the rest of the fam!

xo Meg