Recipe: Quick and Easy Pizza Crust

My cousin passed this simple pizza crust recipe which I just cooked last night. It was easy and made a really nice, light crust. Click on the title above to get to the original allrecipes.com recipe page.

1 (.25 oz) package active dry yeast
1 tsp white sugar
1 c. warm water (110 degrees F)
2.5 c. bread flour (all purpose works fine too)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. salt

1. Preheat oven to 450. In a medium bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2. Stir in flour, salt and olive oil. Beat until smooth. Let rest for 5 minutes.
3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat or roll into a round. Transfer crust to a lightly greased pizza pan or cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal. Spread with desired toppings and bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Let baked pizza cool for 5 minutes before serving.

My cousins comments:

Those are the real instructions... some things I've learned: Roll the dough out on the surface that you want to cook it on (don't try to transfer it). I use a pizza stone, usually (if you use a pizza stone, flour or cornmeal it - the dough will stick). But when I don't want to use the big oven, I just pat it out on a piece of parchment paper and lay that directly on the rack of the toaster/ convection oven. Which brings me to - you can use this to make one big pizza or two little pizzas. We like the little ones because they fit in the smaller oven. The dough is super sticky, so I roll it around on the floured surface so that you don't get it all over your hands, and then once you are ready to shape it - put a little olive oil on your hands - it makes it a lot easier. Also, I have let it rise longer than 5 minutes. I think up to about 30 minutes or so is OK.

My comments after trying it:

You can turn out the dough onto a clean surface and continue mixing the dough and begin rolling out the crust. My dough wasn't very wet and was easy to work with. I then was able to carefully peel the crust off of the flour dusted surface and place on my pizza stone.

The 30 minute rise time worked out really well. The crust was light and browned very well. A tip my friend gave me is to spread the pizza sauce and topping fairly far out, almost out to the crown of the crust. This helps not having so much crust with all of the topping in the middle. Also, always spread a little cheese on top of the toppings to hold everything together while cutting and eating the pizza. Go easy on the pizza sauce, as too much will make the whole pizza a bit more moist and the toppings won't stay in their place or on the slice as you start to eat it.

Some changes I might recommend are adding butter in place of olive oil and maybe adding a tablespoon more to add some fat to the recipe. Also, brush the outside of the crust with butter to give a more crisper finish. Also try adding fresh or powerded garlic to add a bit more flavor to the crust. I prefer a very flavorful crust, and am going to branch out and see what I can create. Don't get me wrong, the crust was good. I just prefer something a bit more rich and rustic.

Enjoy.