food with my dude

Food with My Dude #8: Homemade Pizza

This is Stephen’s second attempt at making pizza. The first attempt was last year and he wasn’t that pleased with the results. Apparently it was so bad that he just had to throw it away. Fingers crossed it worked out better for us this time!

He used a different recipe and store bought dough for that one. So, I don’t think it was too hard to get this one to turn out the way he wanted it.

Homemade Pizza

Here’s the inspiration for this recipe:

The ingredients to make the dough:

  • Flour
  • Iodized salt
  • 1 packet of dry yeast

Price:

$

The only items we really needed to buy was the pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperonis. Everything else, we already had. If you have the time and patience for pizza, it’s relatively cheap after all. Of course, if you just order pepperonis on it, but the other veggies and toppings aren’t that expensive.

We bought this cool scale so Stephen could accurately measure the flour. Apparently the accuracy of the flour’s weight makes a huge difference that I am unaware of at this moment, haha. I mean, the thing was pretty accurate, and he couldn’t get it to be 16 ounces even!

We added the yeast and salt to mix together first.

Once he set up the dough with the help of some gloves and really tossing it around, we end up with this ball of dough. We had to let it sit for about 18-24 hours before we could actually use it. It was around 8:30 going on 9 PM on Saturday night when we did this, so we couldn’t make the actual pizza until Sunday.

Not that you can tell, but we had to coat the bowl and dough with olive oil so it wouldn’t stick or dry out. We checked on the dough’s progress the next day around 6 PM and it slightly rose.

That was only the first half of the meal! The remaining ingredients that we needed to officially make the rest of the pizza:

  • Pepperonis
  • Mozzarella cheese
  • Pizza sauce

Or really, whatever toppings you want to add. Stephen just likes the average pepperoni and cheese. Also, I’m not sure why I angled the picture this way because you can’t even see the dough, ugh. Just pretend you can see the dough in the bowl, haha.

Stephen then halved the dough since that’s the amount he needed for one pizza. For the the remaining pizza dough, I’ll share that with you another week. Be warned, it won’t be a successful recipe. I was so sad to how the final product turned out, but you’ll see my fail!

I’m sure you can tell how much he had to get the dough to be absolutely the perfect size! Haha. For better and crispier results, we cooked the pizza in a cast iron skillet.

The pizza was in the oven between 10-15 minutes. Can’t say it beats Pie Five’s service that manages to produce pizzas in literally five minutes or so, but I think ours turned out pretty well.

Here’s the lovely final product:

He halfway forgot how long it had been in the oven because we didn’t set a timer. It looks burnt, but it didn’t taste like it whatsoever!

Taste: It definitely tasted like a pizza. I am curious to know how you make it taste like wow. Although, I’m basing the opinion from Stephen since I don’t have much of an opinion about pizza.

This time around, the crust was a bit more on the crunchy side that Stephen preferred. He thought the rest of the dough was smushy, but I thought it turned out pretty well. Overall, the dough was pretty good, though. We think it was crunchy due to being baked in a cast iron skillet instead of a pizza stone.

For the the third attempt, we’ll buy a pizza stone at some point, preheat it, then place the pizza on it to cook to avoid the bottom from being so crisp. I don’t know why, he’s the pizza expert! Haha. He also wants to try to experiment and make homemade pizza sauce, so that’ll be another few steps to add.

Rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Heat level:

0. Although, red pepper flakes are my go-to for a lot of things to add some spice in tomato sauces and whatnot.

Have you tried making homemade pizza?

Until next time, friends!

A 28-year-old seeking to live a thousand lives. Blogging and writing about some things that I love, which include succulents, books and music, and what I've been up to while living in Nashville, TN.

21 Comments on “Food with My Dude #8: Homemade Pizza

  1. OOOh I love that you guys did this!! It looks like it turned out well, but I am interested to see how Stephen’s third pizza turns out! Keep us posted 🙂

    As for my pizza experience.. I have never really made the dough myself. I usually buy premade dough but have been wanting to try making it myself! We will see, maybe I will wait for pizza #3 before I try!

    1. Thank you!! I most definitely will post our experience whenever we make the third one! I think kneading and shaping dough is pretty fun! That is, once it’s supposed to resemble how it’s supposed to be and not that sticky, aggravating mess we dealt with, haha.

      I’m not sure when we’ll invest in a pizza stone to be more precise, so it may be a few months. But, I wish you luck on your pizza making!

  2. It’s way too much trouble and effort for me, but MAN does it look TASTY!!!! I always ask Pizza Hut / Dominos / whoever to make my pizza “well done” because I want it brown and crispy like yours turned out. I hate an under-cooked crust.

    Great job guys!

    1. Yeah, taking about two days to make one pizza!? Lots of trust that the dough will turn out right, haha. You can assure that this one was extra, extra crispy. Thank you, Jinjer!

  3. How fun!! I like when a pizza is a little burnt-looking like how yours turned out. I am cracking up about the kitchen scale. Boyfriend would throw that in the trash if I gave him to use. 😂 So funny how our men are opposites in the kitchen!!

    1. Yeah, it definitely turned out well this time thankfully! I would’ve tossed it out, but he insisted how important it was! 🤨 Haha. That’s hilarious, & they definitely seem like opposites when it comes to cooking!

  4. I have a recipe for pizza dough but I feel like its missing something. I’ll definitely try this recipe out and compare because this looks really good too and less products as well.

    1. Awesome, good luck! Make sure to have extra flour on hand. I love how it’s just simple and cheap ingredients that are, more than likely, already in your pantry. I can’t wait to see how it turns out whenever you make it!

  5. Oh my goodness, I LOVE homemade pizza! This looks so super delicious. Homemade pizza dough is some of the best too! Thanks for sharing!

    1. It turned out to be a really good meal! Making your own dough is pretty fun and it’s much more rewarding! Although, I’m a bit impatient sometimes because I wanna cook right away with it, haha. Thanks for stopping by, Courtney!

Do you have anything to add?