Homemade Margherita Pizza

While searching up my usual recipe for pizza dough from mmmisformommy.com, I thought to myself that I've never actually blogged pictures for the steps of whole recipe, just the end product.  So here I am venturing into the increasingly popular world of food photography and step-by-step photo food prep.

Much of my approach to cooking comes from what I see when I open my fridge door.  Since we made our move a few years ago, the hubby does most of the grocery shopping and will sometimes bring home stuff I would probably never buy ... like a huge block of soft mozzarella cheese.

As I'm back to work now, he did the stay-at-home dad thing for a few days this week and cut up some of this cheese along with meats for home-packed "lunchables." Looking in my fridge this morning I saw a container of pre-cut mozzarella cheese, a tomato and I knew he bought pepperoni, so home-made pizza for supper it is!  The cut-up soft mozzarella and tomato reminded of how long it's been since I've had Margherita Pizza.





My first taste of a Margherita Pizza was at a little shop in Nova Scotia called Pizza Market.  The pizzas at this shop were probably the best I've ever tasted.  Pizza Margherita was my favorite:  loaded with simple ingredients of garlic, tomato, basil and mozzarella.

For years, whenever I made homemade pizza, I would use the store-bought kit.  Nowadays, after learning how to make bread, and wanting pizza even when I didn't have pizza sauce on hand, I usually whip the ingredients up myself.  Luckily my husband found pizza sauce I had already made while he was rifling through the freezer this afternoon, so the topping prep simply consisted of cutting a tomato and mincing garlic.

Honestly, even if you don't make home-made bread, pizza dough is not that complicated.  If you have a stand-mixer with dough hooks for kneading (those spiral "beaters", if you were wondering) then it's a breeze.  Just remember you'll need extra time for the dough to rise than you would with a store-bought kit.  Here's the before and after rise of about 45 mins.








I used the recipe from mmmisformommy.com tonight but I find it's not quite enough for two medium-thickness pizzas so I'm gonna try this one from sallysbakingaddiction.com next time.









I make my own pizza sauce as well.  I just combine a few "easy pizza sauce" recipes from allrecipes.com and blend them together according to the ingredients I have on hand (i.e. I'll use a recipe for tomato paste if I have no tomato sauce on hand).

This is the pre-baked ...

And the post-baked goodness.  It was delicious!