Easy Pizza Dough

Every night when I come home from work I am faced with a dilemma....what to have for dinner.  I am too cheap to order takeout, too tired to go to the store, and do not plan out my meals well  enough in advance to have options on hand.  Last night as I was facing this dilemma, I wondered how hard it would be to make pizza dough.  We had shredded Italian cheeses in the fridge and tomato sauce in the pantry, so I would just need to make a quick dough.  I googled "quick pizza dough" and found this recipe on good old Allrecipes.com.  

All you need are a few ingredients that you probably already have on hand: yeast, water, sugar, salt, flour, olive oil, and cornmeal.

Dissolve 1 packet of yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar into a cup of warm water. Let sit for 10 minutes. Then add 2 tablespoons olive oil. 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 1/2 cups of flour. It will look something like this:

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Grease a pizza pan or baking sheet and sprinkle some cornmeal on top.  Like this:

Then place the dough onto a floured surface and stretch out/shape to the desired size and thickness. Transfer to the greased pan.  Then comes the fun part!  Add your toppings...

We added spicy marinara sauce, shredded Italian cheese blend, and sausage.  I also put some olive oil on the crust - not sure if that really did anything but a little olive oil here and there can't hurt!

Bake in a 450 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. I found that 15 minutes was plenty.

 The cheese and crust browned so nicely in the oven.  I now have confidence in trying out different types of pizza.  I will definitely stick with this dough recipe because it was really quick and easy.  I hope you give it a try!