Pizza!

I am dying to try out our "new" Kitchenaid stand mixer that we found at Savers for only $50.  I have been inspired by the awesome pizzas at Spankys Una Pizza in Evansville, Indiana.  Though I can never make the excellent crust served by Spankys, and because I am in Utah at the moment, I have to make my own crust.  That is where the mixer comes into play.  To make the crust, I stole a recipe from the interwebs (thank you, Al Gore):

• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

We have made pizza in the past, but this is an attempt to make good dough from scratch.  Before I started, I did a little research and found some helpful videos. The Lets make some pizza dough video is somewhat informative, but the guy tells you the date, and does not give any information of the measured amount of ingredients used. Susan knows how to do it, though!

I started with warm water and a yeast packet.  I forgot to add the sugar, so I added about 15 minutes after adding the yeast to the water.  Then, I forgot that I was readying the yeast for about 30 minutes.  After "preparing the yeast," I used a combination techniques (hand and mixer kneading) to mix in the dry ingredients. Unfortunately for you, I failed to record the mixing process.  

Tired dough.

I mixed the dough in the stand mixer for about 5 minutes, adding flour until the dough lost most of its stickyness.  I then hand kneaded flour into the dough for another couple of minutes.   I then let the dough rest for 15 minutes, because it was tired after all of that kneading.

While waiting for the dough to grow, I readied my oven.  This is extremely premature, because I still have a lot to do to my pizza before it goes in the oven.  I made sure I put the pizza stone in the oven to get it nice and hot.

Pizza stone.

We cut the risen dough in half and put half in the freezer and Brooke tossed the other half.  For those unfamiliar with the tossing process, here are some videos:
Toss of the dough

A wiki how-to
One day, you may be able to toss the dough like so
One B tossed the dough, we whipped the pizza stone out of the oven, put some flour on the stone, and then arranged the tossed dough onto the stone.  
We then chopped the veggies, caramelized the onions, toasted and seasoned the tomatoes, and spread on the sauce (canned stuff).  We should have done all of the preparation beforehand, but again I forgot - mainly because I was soooo excited about the dough.  We also added some garlic and artichoke hearts from the Whole Foods olive bar.  It was a huge pile of vegetables, so lets hope it cooks......

While we wait for our pizza to cook, lets get inspired:
Some Olsen Twins Pizza!
Epic mealtime pizza!!! -Bacon Strips & Bacon Strips & Bacon Strips
My drunk pizza kitchen

AFTER 35 min, THE PIZZA is DONE!!

Sprouts!

Cucumber and basil sprouts.