Channelling My Inner Pioneer Woman Pizza Night Tutorial

A while ago, I wrote about our pizza nights being a Very Big Deal around here.  In the comments, Stacy and Natalie asked two important questions that I thought could reasonably be dragged out to make an entire blog post.

And today is that day, lucky readers!

First off, we'll tackle Stacy's question, which was "How much dough does this recipe make?"

The recipe that's printed on the pizza peel makes four 12 oz. pizzas and 24 garlic knots.  I would never ever ever ever ever bother weighing out pizza dough, but Ken used to work in a couple of pizza joints and picked up some nasty OCD habits like that.

Next is Natalie's question, which was, "Do you think you could make a Pioneer Woman style post of your pizza recipe? Like the whole shabang with the homemade sauce and dough? Would love to try it out your pizza style! =)"

The answer to which is HECK YEAH I CAN!!!!

So here we go-

Hi y'all!  I just got back from roping cattle and chopping ice on the pond, and I'm really tired because that's hard work, but because I love you, I'm going to show you how we make pizza around here when we're not hosting amazing giveaways and riding horses into sunsets and whatnot.

Let's go.

(yeah, I know that Ree doesn't go for the lazy collage pictures, but Cari-channelling-her-inner-Ree does)

Dough.  The backbone of a pizza.  And even though it doesn't have even an ounce of butter in it (!!!!), I still love it so much.  So let's make some dough.

(clockwise from top left):  First assemble your cast of characters- flour, yeast, sugar, oil, water, salt.  All good things in life.  Particularly the sugar.  As my too-tight jeans can tell you.
(Ree's always talking about her weight, though, as far as I can see, she's making it up).

Put your very warm (but not hot!  You'll kill the yeast and that would be sad for you and the dead yeast) water, yeast, and sugar into a bowl.  Swirl it around a bit.  Leave it alone until it gets bubbly and frothy on top.

While you're waiting for the yeast to cream, add your salt and oil into your stand mixer.  I love my stand mixer.  Her name is Beulah.  (true story)

Once the yeast is creamed, add it to the mixer, then add your flour- one cup at a time.  Make that mixer work for its money.  Not that we pay our mixer.  It's just a figure of speech.  Paying a mixer would be weird.

Turn your dough out on to a floured surface and look at it.  Love it.  Admire its doughiness that will soon become delicious pizza.

Then, if you're married to a weirdo, drag out your scale and cut the dough into 12 oz. balls.  Now, you and I would say, "11 oz., 13 oz., close enough," but, according to the house pizza expert, This Would Be Wrong.  And we don't want to be wrong.

Put your dough balls (there should be six of them) onto a cookie sheet and place in your fridge to crust up while you do other things.

While your dough is crusting up, you can make the sauce.

Now, if you have any authentic Italian lineage, you need to turn away right now.  No, I'm not kidding.  You will never be able to unsee what I'm going to show you.  So just scroll on down a bit and never look back.

Ok.  Now that all the Italian-Americans are gone, we can continue without making anyone weep.

First, get a gratuitous shot of your handsome husband.  Ree's got Ladd, and while Ladd's certainly a lovely person, he's got nothing on Ken.  Look at that man!  The oven's not the only thing that's hot in my kitchen.

Sorry.

Mooooving on.  Ingredients assembled and embarrassedly looking away from my PDA.  Crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic, italian seasoning blend, sugar (I TOLD YOU NOT TO LOOK, YOU ITALIANS!)

Chop onions and garlic.  Sautee until translucent.   Your kitchen will start smelling so good you'll want to eat the onions and garlic by the spoonful.  Do not do this for two reasons:  1. you'll burn your tongue  2. you need them for the sauce

Add tomatoes, and enough italian seasoning to cover the entire surface of the sauce.  Then, add about 1-2 Tbs. of sugar (Yes, I know that Italian grandmothers are weeping everywhere over the fact that I add sugar to my sauce.  But it's my blog and Cari-channelling-her-inner-Ree does what she likes)

Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.

The next part of the pizza prep at our house involves a lot of music, wine, dancing, and general craziness.  This is fun for the family, but not so good for photographic documentation.

So let's pretend like there's a picture of my attractive and manly husband rolling out the dough balls.  Then picture him flipping them in the air like you see on TV.  Then imagine him ladling sauce onto the pizzas, putting toppings on them, and putting them in a 525 degree oven (using his personalized pizza peel).  Imagine the pizzas cooking on baking stones for, oh, I don't know, let's say 8-10 minutes?

Then they come out, get cut, and are laid out for our ravenous rancher family to eat:

Here's the kinds pictured above:

White pizza (no sauce, olive oil, mozzarella, feta, garlic butter crust)
Cheese (with sauce, mozzarella, feta, garlic butter crust)
Bacon
Barbecue chicken, bacon, and caramelized onion pizza with barbecue tomato sauce (Ken mixes some barbecue sauce in with the pizza sauce and it is the best pizza I've ever eaten in my entire life.)

The baby's not there for eating.  She's there for cute.

Other favorite combinations:

bacon and caramelized onion
sundried tomato, roasted garlic, and fresh mozzarella
roasted red pepper, caramelized onion and feta

Now I'm hungry.  So, so hungry for pizza.
And the best news is that while my kitchen is demolished from pizza night activities, we always have enough left overs that I don't have to make Sunday morning breakfast!  We all just have leftover pizza and the gloriousness is extended.

And there you have it.  Pizza night tutorial.
Thanks for asking, Stacy and Natalie.
And thanks for letting me borrow your image and likeness, Ree.