I’m not sure if I have mentioned that I hate my husband’s new schedule, but I do. I really [bleeping] hate it. Life is just really difficult when hubby is on a completely different schedule than all of us. Mealtimes, I may have mentioned, are especially difficult since he leaves at 3:30 pm. Usually he will eat the previous night’s leftovers for lunch and I will pack whatever I made for dinner for work. For some reason, I am having a problem adjusting my brain to getting dinner started in the morning. Since the baby has joined us, the majority of our meals involve the slow cooker or some kind of preparation that I usually do while the baby takes his morning nap. But the baby has not been taking his morning nap adding to my verklempt-ness {it was either that or verklemptity…}. Well, in all honesty, he did take one today but mommy in her verklemptity took a nap too. Hey, I needed it. Life is rough. Anyhoo my point is I didn’t get a meal planned nor executed for today. Hubby woke up and I drew a blank. A big fat blank. And I panicked a little too. I think the stress is seriously getting to my brain, I mean, I practically ran a guy over with my cart at Target the other day I was so deep in my own little world  thought! So hubby calmed me down by pointing out that he hadn’t eaten at work the night before because he came home early on account of my overreaction to [what turned out to be] a minor boo-boo on Camden.

So you have food?

Yes, honey, I have food, now please come down off of the roof.

He further let me off the hook by accepting spicy sweet meatballs and Pizza Rolls as an acceptible lunch. He’s so good to me sometimes. Luckily he had recorded the NHL All-Stars game which made his lunch seem a little more respectable.

So short story long, I didn’t have anything planned for dinner. Furthermore, I couldn’t in good conscience feed my kid frozen taquitos again since I wussed out of a dinnertime battle by making them the night before instead of making him eat what I made the rest of the family. Come on, tell me you haven’t done that. It seriously would’ve been an all night battle waged something like this: he refuses to eat what I made, it’s yucky, and 2 hours later he is starving and acting like I’m the worst mom ever because I won’t let him eat a Go-gurt and Cheez-its. I will gladly make him taquitos to spare myself some of this drama. But if I feed him frozen taquitos two nights, in a row, I may lose my mommy license, so I decide to use that mozzerella in the fridge before it goes bad and try my hand at some pizza dough. I find an easy recipe on Allrecipes.com and have a go at.

Easy Pizza Dough

INGREDIENTS:

1 pkt active dry yeast

1 cup warm water (110 degrees)

2 – 2 1/2 cups bread flour {dough was a little too sticky with 2 cups}

2 tsp sugar

2 tbs EVOO

1 tsp salt

 

My additions:

4 tbs melted butter

2 tsp minced garlic

 

DIRECTIONS:

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water (I nuked room temp water for 40 seconds). Let stand for 10 minutes until creamy.

2. Next mix all of your dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the olive oil to the yeast. Incorporate dry ingredients slowly into the yeast and olive oil mixture.Mix well until a “stiff” dough forms (whatever that means…).

3. At this point I was supposed to: “Cover and rise until doubled in volume, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees F”

But I must have missed that part. Oops. I skipped right over that into the ”Turn dough out onto a well floured surface. Form dough into a round and roll out into a pizza crust shape” part.

Also, I recommend preheating your oven to 400 instead, 350 is weak sauce.

{Note: The original recipe calls for 2 cups of bread flour but I had a heck of sticky time with the dough. Don’t have a heck of sticky time like me, add in another half cup of flour.}

My very first job was in a pizza parlor. I remember distinctly making pizza dough but it never turned out like this:

Granted, we had a special machine that rolled out the dough for us. I’m about to cover this sucka with sauce and cheese anyway.

EASY SAUCE:

8 oz can tomato sauce

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp basil

1/2 tsp garlic

dash of paprika

drizzle of EVOO

If you like you can make this while your dough is rising so the flavors marry.

 

Back to the dough…

I think pizza crust is yummier if it has some garlic butter so I brushed some along the edges…sorta…

Now the dough is ready for some toppings!

Tyler is super stoked I am making pizza and asks if he can do the sauce and the cheese. I am super stoked he wants to do something besides play video games or watch tv so I let him.

 

So if you want to eat sometime that day, you can pour the about 3/4 of sauce in the middle and spread it with the back of a spoon. Use any remaining sauce as a dipping sauce along with any leftover garlic butter.

Next comes my favorite part: the cheese!

Put the pie in the oven and bake until golden brown, 20-25 minutes.

Despite forgetting the whole rising part, the pizza rose pretty nicely. The crust was thin in the middle but that had more to do with my total utter lack of skill in the rolling department.

Total time was about one hour from start to slicing which is about 35 min of prep. If I followed directions, it would’ve been about an hour and a half with rising time.

The best part was the cost which was next to nothing.

Cheese: $3

Sauce: $0.33

Yeast: $1.17 for a 3 pack, so $0.39 for one packet

The other input’s costs were negligible and I already had them on hand. So the total cost of one large cheese pizza was under $4! The Frugal Girl would be proud.

And, perhaps most importantly, the boy thought it was yummy.

But mostly……

 

…’cause he made it.