Help! I think my little ones are pizza snobs. The further you get away from the cities the further you are from a decent slice. We’re so far away that a small chain is the best option and we hold out nose. Once I saw a local shop use a paint brush to “paint” olive oil on a pizza after it came out of the oven. Not surprisingly, they closed.
Other places want you to believe Brick Oven or Wood Fired will make you think quality, but really it’s just a gimmick. Go to Lombardi’s in New York or Toconelli’s in Philly and it will forever change your expectations.
So over the last couple years we’ve been making our own pizza and probably saved a decent chunk of change by doing so. This qualifies as a cheat meal if your dieting due to the fat and carb count but if you’re offseason, we keep the protein count super high, with lots of chicken, steak and high quality cheese. I keep the dough pretty thin to keep the carbs down a little bit.
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| Rivers of Cheese. High Protein Pizza. |
For a while we bought our dough at Harris Teeter. It was wheat dough and it wasn’t bad, but it is so elastic. It tried to stay in the fetal position on the pizza stone. Not great for making a quick pizza.
So I started making my own dough. I follow this recipe. It’s not hard to find. Google wheat pizza dough recipe and it’s right at the top. I don’t bother with the food processor. The kids love to work the dough. Turns out perfect most of the time. Sometimes it’s sticky because the kids dumped half the flour on the floor but it still works.
Okay so now the dough’s finished. The rest is up to you. Since it’s wheat dough, there’s a lot of flavor so go easy on the pizza sauce. Normally I skip the sauce and broil some tomatoes sliced up. If I do use sauce like on the one pictured, I make it with a can of crushed tomatoes and some dried basil, salt and pepper. You save some sugar in the marinara that I prefer to avoid.
My favorite toppings include, spicy chicken sausage, blue cheese, steak, apples, sweet potato ribbons, pineapple and if fresh mozzarella. I try not to do them all at the same time, but I do bump up the protein for Karen and I. Using fresh ingredients you can’t really go wrong.
The kids are involved in every step of the way. They get to pick the toppings if they don’t eat it all before it gets on the pizza.
Thanks for the dough recipe. I’m always looking for a good pizza dough recipe. My kids are definitely pizza snobs too, haha–but really it’s not that hard to make a really good pizza!