Homemade Pizza

Last week the roomslice was craving pizza and while we were debating which Mission pizzeria would provide the shortest wait for a Friday night dinner, we came to the conclusion that we should just make our own.  I've made the dough from scratch before, but this time we opted for the Trader Joe's uncooked packaged variety.

mmm dough. sitting for twenty minutes.

We portioned the dough into quarters to make two pizzas each.  One for dinner and one for lunch at work this week.  Now this is where the fun part starts because you can basically just throw on whatever you've got in the fridge.  I opted to first knead some chopped garlic in my dough for a kick of flavor.  Roommate went for a tomato sauce and I used a hummus guacamole for my base.  If I had had any, I likely would've opted for pesto instead, but we made do with what we had.

Roommate's more traditional pizza on the left.  My noncomformist pizza on the right. 

Toppings: I decided on shrimp, bacon, mushrooms, red onions, tomatoes, feta cheese, cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese.  I was debating adding a fried egg on top at the end, but decided there was already enough going on on my pie.  Tip: I cooked the bacon and the shrimp about three-quarters done before putting them on the pizza so that they wouldn't be raw going into the oven, but wouldn't become overcooked.  This was good because it meant I didn't end up with a pizza dripping with bacon grease, (though we all know I probably wouldn't have minded).

We cooked the pizzas on one of those no-stick cookie mats which still produced a good crust, but no sticking.  Perfect.  About ten minutes at 450 degrees and we were enjoying our home-made pies without the wait or the bill that comes with a restaurant.