Homemade Pizza
Today Mike and I decided to stay home and watch the AFC and NFC Championship games. We had spent our Saturday night hanging out at Buffalo Wild Wings for fight night (about 6 hours total) and were quite worn out over the whole ordeal. While I love fight nights this one was just way too long and there were just too many people there. We also are just not cold weather people. Our high was somewhere in the upper 30s/lower 40s today which added to our laziness.
So I did some digging in the pantry and came across a pizza crust mix and thought it might be fun to try out. It was a one time use/one pizza mix made by Martha White. I like her quick and easy muffin mixes (just add water) so this one should have been pretty easy. Reading the back of the package confirms this thought. Mix 1/2 cup hot water with mix and then form into a ball and let “rise” for 5 minutes. Simple enough.
So I proceed to create the dough and notice after sitting covered for 5 minutes it doesn’t really rise. No biggie probably won’t matter anyways once I get it into the pan. Wrong on so many levels! Lets just say the bag advertised a crisp crust and that was because it was a thin barely there crust! So I was skeptical but continued on. I layerd on the toppings and placed on the lowest rack (as suggested) and baked for 10 minutes. The result was quite a scary looking, uneven, slightly overdone pizza. So we threw in the Tony’s pizza (our emergency pizza stocked at all times in the freezer) and let the homemade creation cool down and hopefully improve its appearance but it didn’t really improve :(
Not wanting to give up (or let this food go to waste) I decided to cut a slice and give it a try. It was actually quite tasty and not as crunchy/burnt as I thought it was. The uneven edges that I had left to be an outer crust had been slightly overcooked and brown but the areas covered in topping stayed perfect! So not all was lost. We ate both pizzas and enjoyed them equally.
So all in all I would definetly buy this mix again. I think next time I will try to let it rise a bit longer than 5 minutes and not cook it nearly as long as the package suggests - only until the cheese melts. The pizza crust was pretty low calorie and would probably do well for those on a diet/Weight Watchers as you could get the crunchy pizza taste without too many calories from the crust.
