P – Pizza Party!!!

There is nothing more satisfying than making your own pizza, and it’s seriously not even that hard. My “college job” is delivering pizzas, and I’ve been doing it for a few years, so I’ve picked up a few things over time, which I’m going to share with you!

There are two recipes I’m particularly fond of. The first type of pizza is essentially a pizza margherita: Roasted garlic sauce, topped with fresh tomatoes and basil. The second is a white pizza, with ricotta cheese as its base, topped with caramelized onions and mushrooms.

Here is what you’ll need for either:
1. A block of mozzarella cheese – Don’t get the shredded stuff or the cheap stuff! For about $5 you can get a high quality cheese and it will seriously improve the taste of your final product tenfold.
2. Dough balls – While you could make your own dough from scratch, it’s very time consuming. If you go down to your favorite local pizza shop, you can usually buy one of their raw dough balls for only a couple bucks. It’ll likely taste better too (unless you happen to be a bread master of sorts).
3. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4. Fresh Basil – Sliced into long strips. Don’t get the dehydrated stuff!
5. Fresh garlic – 1 bulb
6. Salt, Pepper, and Oregano
7. Baking sheets – A stone sheet will produce the best results, but any will do honestly, round or square

For the Pizza Margherita you’ll also need:

1. A food processor – We’ve got one of those awesome Magic Bullets
2. Fresh Tomatoes – 1-2, sliced thinly.

For the white pizza you’ll need:
1. Ricotta Cheese
2. One large white onion
3. About 3 tablespoons of sugar
4. Mushrooms – I prefer cremini or shiitake because they’ve got more flavor than regular button mushrooms

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. While that’s warming up, you can flatten the dough, make the sauces, and grate your cheese.

Sauces
For the Pizza Margherita, I love using a Roasted Garlic sauce. You’ll want to get on this early because the garlic takes a bit of time to roast.
Peel the all of the cloves from a bulb of garlic and place them in a small brownie pan (or something similar). Cover them in a generous helping of Olive Oil and stir it around, making sure they’re well coated. Put it into your oven (preheated at 425 F) for about 15 minutes, stirring very often (every 3-4 minutes). When the cloves become a golden brown, they’re ready to go.
Put them into your food processor along with about 1/3 cup olive oil, plus 1/2 tsp salt, pepper, and oregano each.
Blend well until the consistency begins to thicken. It may not all mix together perfectly but that’s okay.

For the White Sauce, get a small mixing bowl and using a fork, mix together your ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/2 tsp each salt/pepper/oregano until it all seems evenly blended.

Caramelized Onions
For the white pizza, you’ll need to caramelize your onions. Heat up some olive oil in a medium sized pan on medium heat. Peel and cut up your onion into large wedges, and put them into the pan. Then add 3 tablespoons of sugar and about 1/2 tablespoon of salt. Stir it up and coat it all evenly. Simmer, stirring often, until the onions turn brown and become flaccid.

Dough
I was going to try to explain dough flattening technique, but it’s really something you have to see to understand. Luckily, I found a really good YouTube tutorial that should get you going in the right direction.

After you’ve flattened your dough and made your sauces, put your dough onto your pan and spread the sauces out evenly over the pizzas, making sure to leave a little room for crust on the edges. Toss on your grated mozzarella cheese.
For the pizza margherita, put on your sliced tomatoes.
For the white pizza, put on your mushrooms and caramelized onions.
Bake at 425 for 20 minutes, or until the crust turns a golden brown.

Remove them from the oven and scatter your basil strips over each pizza. Allow them to cool for about 10 minutes, then slice up and serve!

Friends and pizza.. I’m not sure what else you need in life.