Easy, Tasty Pizza Crust

After going through dozens of recipes for pizza dough, and having nothing but pizza problems, I finally came up with a good recipe that works and it's easy with little kneading!

To further ease the pizza problems, sprinkle your baking pan liberally with cornmeal so it doesn't stick.  And for a tastier crust, sprinkle some parmesan cheese on the crust after you brush it with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
I'll also be showing you my recipe for my awesome pizza sauce! Don't waste money on the stuff in the store! It's so easy to make at home and really not much more trouble than opening a can and your herb bottles!

I piled mine high with ham, pineapple, cheddar and mozzarella! YUM

In this recipe, I DO use the parmesan in the plastic tubular containers. (crowd gasps) I know! But really! The stuff DOES seem to add a certain tang and flavor to the crust that I can't seem to get with real parm.

This makes 2-12-inch pizzas, I made three personal size and two child size pizzas

On to the recipe!

• 1 pkg or 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast
• 1 cup hot tap water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• Extra virgin olive oil for brushing
• parmesan cheese in a tub
• cornmeal for dusting your baking sheet
• my easy, yummy pizza sauce 

Run tap water in a large glass bowl until water is hot. Dump out and put 1 cup of hot water into the bowl. I find warming the bowl helps.
Dissolve yeast in the water and let sit a minute.

Add sugar, salt, oil and whisk well.

Add half of the flour and beat well (use a wooden spoon or your mixer with dough hooks), until there are no lumps.

Gradually add the remaining flour.

Mix with dough hooks or kneed 5 minutes, or until dough starts climbing up the hooks, pulling away from the bowl, and isn't sticky.

 Dust your hands a bit with flour and your board. Separate dough into balls according to how many and what size pizzas you're making.

Sprinkle your baking sheet liberally with cornmeal and press the dough into rounds:

 Put onto baking sheets and press down a little.

Let rise about 20-30 minutes or so. Press down if you want a thinner crust and brush your pizza crusts with olive oil and sprinkle with real parmesan cheese, if you wish.

Then slip into a preheated oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.  I like to precook my crusts to ensure they'll be done in the middle.

You can cook them until done and freeze for later use, or start topping your pizzas! 

ohhhhhhhhhhhh mama! I made mine a Hawaiian! I was just missing some olives!
I baked this about 15 minutes or so, until it was hot and bubbly!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

After much agonizing over the loss of my old banana bread recipe, I started a new one, adding to what I could remember of the old one, and adding something new: mini chocolate chips! This is such a yummy, moist bread!  I can't wait to make another one without the chips and with some other ingredients added.


I used something called a SilverBullet little mini-mixer thing my son convinced me to buy a few months ago, and I have to say, it has grown on me and I may love it more than my pesky blender that doesn't seem to do much better than a 20 dollar blender.  Did I say that? I'm sorry blender. :p

Anyway, I took my bananas out of the freezer to thaw, then squeezed the insides out into this mini blender thing that I originally didn't want to buy (lol), and gave it a few whizzes. It took about 7 frozen, thawed bananas to make about 2 cups of whizzed banana.  It seems like a lot of bananas, but it really isn't if you consider that it always seems the last one or two bananas in a bunch start to go spotty and no one wants to eat it, so I toss it in a freezer baggie and throw it into the freezer. Better than throwing it away and having fruit flies until garbage day. ha!  You think I kid!

So go thaw out your bananas, grab your blender or mini-blender because you'll want them more than just mashed, and take your eggs out of the fridge to come to room temp.  Ready? Let's make some banana bread, I'm hungry!

• 1/2 cup butter, softened, don't use the microwave for this, just let it sit out at room temp until you can leave a squishy fingerprint, but the butter isn't melting all over the place.
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, room temp
• 2 cups whizzed thawed frozen bananas
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Grease a loaf pan with spray pam or similar.

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla in a large glass bowl until smooth and light on med-high speed.
Beat in eggs one at a time.
Beat in bananas on med-low speed.

In a smaller bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt, and dump into the wet mixture in the large bowl. Stir with large wooden spoon JUST until combined. You don't want to over stir.
Fold in mini chocolate chips gently.

Carefully pour into your loaf pan and bake uncovered for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check about 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time and, if needed, cover with foil to keep top from getting too dark.  Uncover when you take it out of the oven to cool.

Serve with soft butter warm out of the oven! MMMmmmm !!

Buttermilk Cornbread

Who says cornbread is just for cold weather and chili? I think it goes great with BBQing too!
  
My son LOVES cornbread, especially with warm out of the oven topped with a pool of melting butter and honey!
This is a sweet cornbread, but not too sweet, so you may want to increase the sugar to 3/4 a cup if you want it sweeter. This bread BEGS for honey, so don't forget to add that to your grocery list!

Also, use a wooden spoon! I can't tell you why, but using a wooden spoon on baking recipes makes a big difference.   It really does! Try it. :)

Oh, and about 20 or so minutes before you plan to make this, pull out a cup of your buttermilk and an egg out of the fridge to come to room temp.  It has to be room temp! I hear to quicken this process, you can put the egg in warm tap water for a couple minutes, but I haven't tried this. I'm afraid of coming out with a scrambled egg.

On to the recipe!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Sift together in a large bowl:

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal, yellow or white, I used yellow
• 1/2 cup white sugar (or more if you like it sweeter)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt

In separate smaller bowl, whisk together:

• 1 cup of buttermilk, room temp
• 1/4 cup veggie oil
• 1 egg, room temp

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until JUST blended. It will be lumpy. Let sit 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, it'll have a fluffy feel to it. Give it 2 or 3 more gentle stirs.

Pour into a greased (I use the spray Pam type stuff)  8x8 or so square glass baking dish, and bake in a preheated 400* oven for 15- 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the top is golden.

While it's still hot, brush well with butter!
Serve warm with honey! (and more butter, if desired!)

Good in any season, if you ask me! Goes great with a BBQ!