Homemade Pizza

I had a craving this weekend for pizza.

Oh sure, I could have called Papa John's or Domino's, and had a pizza within a half hour or so. But since I'm getting more and more comfortable with my bread maker, I figured it wouldn't be too hard to make pizza dough from scratch. And since I needed to go grocery shopping anyway, I just picked up the ingredients to make the sauce from scratch as well. And it's a good thing the sauce freezes, 'cause my recipe wound up making a half gallon . . .

While the dough worked away in the bread maker, the sauce simmered; including the double-proofing, both finished at about the same time. I divided the dough into thirds, wrapped two up for the fridge, and worked one out onto my pizza screen. If there's anything I remember from making English muffin pizzas as a kid, it's go easy on the sauce - the last thing you want is a soggy pizza. So I spread a thin layer out with a ladle.

I had read on Serious Eats about crisping pastrami to top a hamburger, so I did the same for the first pizza topping, chopping the pastrami up into bite-size bits.

Never been a fan of shredded cheese on pizza; always liked the thickness of sliced cheese. Did mostly mozzarella with a little sharp cheddar for flavor.

Added sliced pepperoni and crumbled bacon to finish it off. Yeah, I know, no vegetables. My pizza, my rules.

15 minutes at 425 degrees (10 minutes on the screen, five minutes directly on the rack) and man-oh-man, did the kitchen ever smell good.

The crust is what I was most proud of, since it had the perfect balance of crisp and chew . . . didn't even need to dip it in ranch dressing. And I still have all the ingredients left to make more . . .