"Frozen" pizza (Recipe)

For Mother's Day I gave my mom a frozen pizza. Before you scoff at my choice of gifts, let me explain. It was a pizza that I made and then put it in the freezer. Hence, a pizza that was frozen, previously made with love. The toppings were pretty basic: tomato sauce, mozzarella, cheddar and parmesan cheeses, and some homemade meatballs. Actually the meatballs were leftover from when I made the won ton skin raviolis. I froze the leftover meat, defrosted them for the pizza, pan cooked it like you would ground beef, and sprinkled it over the pizza. Here's a picture. My mother loved it.

Pizza is pretty basic. I'd say the most complicated thing is making the dough and then forming it. But this is the easiest bread/pizza dough recipe as you can use this recipe to make regular bread, pizza dough, or use it as a base for whatever other bread creation you'd like to make. I may elaborate in a future posting. I'm also using the word "easy" loosely. If you have never made bread before and are up for the challenge, here is the recipe.

 

First I took 1 1/3 c. bottled or filtered water and heated it in the microwave for 1 minute 10 seconds. The amount of time needed will differ based on the microwave you have, but the goal is to get the water heated to about 100-110 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer, it feels like a warm bath. Then to the heated water I added about 1 teaspoon of sugar and then 1 tsp. or one packet of yeast. While the yeast mixture is blooming I prepared the dry ingredients.

In my standing mixer bowl, I added 2 1/2 c. white bread flour, 1/2 c. whole wheat flour, 1/2 c. of ground flax seed and 1 tsp. salt. I'm really into getting enough fiber in my diet so I do this to preserve the deliciousness of using white flour but still getting the benefits of whole wheat and fiber from the flax seeds. You won't taste any difference, trust me. Or if you want to keep it simple, just use 3 1/2 c. of white flour plus the salt. I mixed all the dry ingredients together and checked my yeast. If it's bubbly and foamy, the yeast is alive and ready to use.

I poured the water/yeast into the bowl of dry ingredients, attached my dough hook and let it go on low speed until all incorporated. If you don't have a standing mixer, you can mix with a spoon until the water is mostly incorporated into the flour, pour everything onto a clean flat surface and nead with your hands until a nice dough ball is formed.

Once the dough is a nice ball that's not too sticky or too hard, I let it rest in a bowl, covered with a towel after rubbing some olive oil all over. After the dough doubled in size (about 45 minutes), I then let it slowly fall out of the bowl onto a floured surface and flattened it with my palms. To shape it so it remains an even width throughout, I start in the middle and work my way out pressing and pulling until it's as flat as I like and as thin as I like. Then I added my toppings and stuck it in the freezer until frozen solid, then wrapped it in plastic until ready to use. To bake, I use a pizza stone preheated at 450 degrees and  bake the frozen pizza for 10 minutes. Voila!