Some years ago, well, 4 to be exact....when we moved to Belle and our only Pizza option was Pizza Hut, which is good, but limited and we never have agreed on a crust option, we went to homemade pizza. We had made it on occasion before, but when we were in Spearfish we usually just ordered Papa John's (best pizza ever), or got Papa Murphy's take & bake. Also, to feed a family of 5 at the time, it was fairly expensive to order out, then there became 6. We can make two extra large pizzas at home for around a few bucks. Can't beat that.
We recently purchased a Ninja & have been experimenting with it's many uses. One of the things we really wanted to try was the dough feature. My first experiment was a cookie recipe out of the the recipe book that came with the Ninja. The dough was yummy but the cookies were an epic fail.
For my second attempt, I knew I wanted to try pizza dough. It had been a while since I had made the dough homemade as I don't like to wait for it to rise and sometimes have consistency issues. NOT with this recipe.
It rises in less than an hour and is very pliable It turned out the consistency of hand tossed. The flavor was pretty good too. The only thing I wish I would have done differently was to bake the crust alone for a few minutes before adding sauce & toppings. I normally do this so the crust cooks evenly, unlike that gooey in the middle, brown on the edges that tends to happen when you pile on the goodies. I got in a bit of a hurry, excited to try this new recipe out and forgot to to do this. It still worked out, just had to lower the oven temp and go a little longer.
We (the boys) made a 1/2 pepperoni & 1/2 cheese for them. They were a little disappointed that it wasn't their favorite ham & pineapple, but ate it up anyway. Pride in ownership goes a long ways.
Jakers really liked it...
Then for Wayne & I, buffalo chicken. I like to use ranch as a base sauce on mine, then mix 2 cans of chicken with a quarter cup of Frank's sauce, spread it over the top, followed by a layer of cheese and another layer of Franks swirled across the top. SUPER YUMMY.
When we make our pizza, it's a family affair! We use either tomato sauce with Italian seasoning, or leftover spaghetti sauce (this time we had some leftover sauce). Andy has become the master cheese shredder (we buy 1lb blocks and shred it ourselves as it's quite a bit cheaper). Luke actually made one batch of the dough on his own after watching me make the first batch, Zach spread the sauce, pepperoni & cheese, and Jakers sat next to us on the counter eating our gizzard appetizer (yes, we love them!!!).
Here is the dough recipe from the NINJA RECIPE BOOK.....
FYI: 1/4oz pkg of dry yeast is equal to one tablespoon if you have the big bag of it like us.
