by Carla Raley

Created on: September 27, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2009

Whether you have a house full of teenagers, or it's just you by yourself, pizza is always a favorite meal. You can go to the pizza place and buy a pizza, or you can make one at home yourself for very little money. And it's not as hard as you would think.

There are many ways to make homemade pizza. Children love them on corn tortilla or English Muffins crusts. For a really quick snack, you can even put pizza toppings on plain saltine crackers. The grocery stores sell prepackaged or even canned pizza crusts now. All these are certainly good options.

But for really easy, totally homemade crust, you can make it yourself in a mixing bowl and knead it by hand, or if you have a bread machine, you can make your homemade dough with it. That's what I want to give the recipe for right now. This recipe will make about three medium pizzas:

Bread Machine Pizza Crust:

1 cup of water (around 90 degrees, or nice and warm, but not hot, to the touch)

5 tablespoons of oil

4 cups of flour (white or whole wheat, or a combination of both)

1 teaspoons of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

3 teaspoons of bread machine yeast

Put water and oil into the bread machine pan. Add flour, sugar and salt on top of the liquids, do not mix. Make an indention in the dry ingredients, and add the yeast.

Lock the bread pan into place in the bread machine. Program the machine on the dough setting, according to the instructions that came with your machine.

When done, you can wrap up the dough and freeze the dough for later use. When you are ready to make pizza, take the dough out of the freezer, thaw, and proceed as you would for fresh dough. Or you can go ahead and use the dough right away.

You can knead the dough again by hand now and let rest for a few minutes, but I usually just go ahead and roll the dough onto the pizza pans. Let them rise for a few minutes, then place in the oven and let the crust get slightly brown, but not too much. Remove from the oven, and spread with pizza sauce. My family's favorite sauce is Del Monte Spaghetti Sauce. One large can is enough for three medium pizzas, unless you really like a lot of sauce. Now top with your favorite cheese, usually mozzarella and cheddar, and then add your favorite toppings: pepperoni, sausage, peppers, olives, or anything you like. Finally, sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top of everything.

Bake the pizza in the oven for about fifteen minutes at 350 degrees, or until bubbly, remove from the oven and enjoy!

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