Pizza!!!

Ingredients:

2/3 C. (1 1/3 C.) Warm water (not Hot)

1/2 tbls. (1 tbls.) yeast

1 tbls. (2 tbls.) oil

1/4 C. (1/2 C.) Kraft Parm Plus! Garlic & Herb flavor

2 C. (4 C.) Flour

Pizza sauce

Mozzarella cheese

Favorite pizza toppings

(Note: Amounts in parentheses are for a two pizza batch of dough)

Let's get started!

Whip together the water, yeast, oil, and Parm Plus. This is the easy part, just scroll ahead and see what I mean.

Whip in some flour, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time. When the mix starts to stick to the whisk, shake off as much as you can and finish the mixing with a mixing spoon.

Continue adding small amounts of flour and mixing with a mixing spoon. When mixing the dough, do not mix in circles, like a cake mix. Mixing stokes should be from the outer bowl edge into the middle. Slowly spin the bowl with each stoke and add more flour as needed. Once the dough starts to ball up, it's time to kneed.

(Note: If you mix the dough with a circular motion, the dough won't ball and you'll end up with little pieces that don't stick together.)

Ready to Kneed? Get Java, and learn to kneed dough too

Is there any way to describe in words how to kneed dough? I personally don't think so. Just watch these fast moving pictures and you'll see what I mean. Just kneed like me!

Make sure you have plenty of flour on your kneeding surface. Add more dough as "kneeded". It's also a good idea to have something like a metal spatula to scape the little sticky stuff off the counter.

To know if you're done kneeding, ask yourself one question: Do you feel lucky? What I mean is, if you think it's smooth enough and no longer sticky, you're probably done kneeding. Now place your ball of dough in a well non-stick sprayed bowl and let it rise to twice it's size. (Also spray the top of the dough so it doesn't dry out while rising.) To make to dough rise just a bit quicker, place the bowl floating in a larger bowl of very warm water.

Doubled in size yet? These pictures are of a single pizza dough. If you made dough for two pizzas, your dough most likely fills the bowl once it's done rising.

Now spread your dough, top with sauce, cheese, and anything else you like. My pizza is shown here with pepperoni. Tip: If you make a half and half topping pizza, make sure cheese is not one of the halves. A plain cheese pizza cooks faster then the side with toppings. You can balance out a high fat pepperoni half, with a pineapple half. Having a topping on both sides allows the pizza to cook evenly.

Now pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 to 20 minutes. Keep a close eye on it, the cheese can burn very quickly.