Pizza Dough ( I will leave the toppings up to you)

Friday night is pizza night. This tradition gets us through the week. When things get tough, when we’re feeling a little down, pizza is the answer. Prior to Peace Corps, pizza (I love alliterations) wasn’t really a big meal of mine (or Chels and I ordered it out. San Diego had some great pizza joints), but then we met Tony, who used to make pizza for fun back home, and he brought this godly treat to our tantalized taste buds. Do give it a try, I highly recommend it. (It may take a few times to get it perfect, but practice, practice, practice! :) )

1 1/3 cups of water
1 tbs Yeast
3 cups of Flour ( and a little more)
1 tbs Oil
¾ tbs of Salt (added in pinches)
2-3 tbs of Sugar
Your choice of Seasoning (Garlic, Parmesan Cheese, Basil, Organo, Honey, etc) (We usually use Basil and Oregano, but honey is good too.)

1)Heat up the 1 1/3 cups of water to about 105 to 115 degrees F. (we do the touch test; it should feel a little hotter than a hot tub)
2) Take water off the heat, and put in a bowl and add the yeast.
3) Put the flour in the same bowl
4) Then, the oil
5) Then, pinches of salt
6) Then, the Spoons of Sugar
7) And, then add your seasoning. (Basil, Oregano, etc)
8) Mix it up in the bowl to get it consistent and stuck together; should be a little gummy, but not too hard.
9) Put some flour over a flat surface where you’re going the roll the dough in a ball.
10) Roll the dough into a ball and add a little flour now and then to prevent sticking.
11) Then Knead the dough like bread, pulling it (like your massaging it) and then putting it back on itself for about 1-2 min.
12) Put a little oil in an empty bowl, and coat the outside of the smooth dough ball by rolling it around in the oil.
13) Let it sit to rise for about an hour. (if it doesn’t rise, the yeast was killed. It may be more, dense but it will taste just fine, I just did this the other day)

This amount of dough will usually make 2 or 3 pizza’s depending on how thin you want to roll out your dough.

Once you roll it out you can put your toppings on it then stick it in the oven. I am not sure how long you bake it for. We usually leave it on for about 7-10 min, but then again we don’t have an oven but we do have Tawa and Kaharee to make a makeshift convenction oven.

The way Tony makes it is to roll it out, then put it on the Tawa, add cheese and build your toppings. Some favorites of ours are Barbeque Chicken (BBQ sauce, cheese chicken, pineapple and scallions) or Veggie (Sweet (bell) peppers, cheese, scallions, onions, avocado, and any other yummy veggies we have around). Tony recently came up with a lemon, broad leaf thyme (fresh), ginger chicken pizza. With cheese, lemon-thyme chicken, scallions, ginger and maybe we’ll throw some sweet peppers on there if we’re feeling festive. But experiment (we even made Dahl Pizza once, wasn't too bad), have some fun with it. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

Our makeshift oven. SCIENCE!

One of the first Pizzas

Pineapple, BBQ Sauce, and Green Onions (we have this one weekly)

This was one of our first attempts, we've gotten much better, now I will have get another pic up soon. Perhaps next Friday?