(Almost) No Waiting Pizza

In my search for pizza recipes, I found many crusts which required kneading, waiting for the dough to rise and letting the dough rest.  This recipe needs none of the above.

You’ll need:
Dough:
1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
1 and 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons oil
1 and 1/12 tablespoons cornmeal

Other ingredients (amounts vary based on personal preference):
Tomato/Pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Toppings of your choice (I used onion, mushroom and green pepper)
Basil and oregano (optional)

Equipment:
food processor
pizza stone or baking sheet
measuring cups and spoons
small bowl (which is easy to pour from)

1. Combine the yeast and sugar in the warm water in a bowl (or Pyrex measuring cup, in my case).  Stir to dissolve and let stand for 10 minutes. Note: make sure your bowl or measuring cup is large enough to hold the yeast when it expands.  This is a lesson I learned the hard way.
   Use the 10 minutes to prepare toppings (cut up vegetables, grate cheese, etc.)
2. When the 10 minutes have elapsed, insert the blade attachment into your food processor and add the flour and salt to the bowl of the processor.  With the food processor running, pour the yeast mixture in through the feed tube and process for about 45 seconds, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
3. Add oil through the feed tube and process for about 60 more seconds.  If the dough is still sticking to the sides of the bowl, add more flour 1 tsp. at a time and process for 10 seconds after each addition.
4. Remove the ball of dough from the food processor bowl.  Hand stretch and shape the dough into a disc.  Sprinkle pizza stone with cornmeal and place the dough onto the stone and roll out with a rolling pin.  The dough should create a pizza crust of roughly 14 inches.  It won’t be perfect, I promise.
5. Place pizza crust in 425 degree oven for 6 minutes.  Spend the 6 minutes to finish prepping toppings, if you need to.
6. After 6 minutes, carefully remove the pizza stone (it’ll be hot!) .  Spread the crust with tomato sauce (leave an area around the edges as crust), cheese and vegetables…or whatever toppings you’re in the mood for.  Return the pizza to the oven and bake at 425 for 18 minutes, or until the rim of the crust is golden brown.
7. Enjoy!

As you can see, my pizza baked a little unevenly, but I’m sure that’s my oven’s fault.  The crust is thin and crispy and the pizza tasted excellent.  I really appreciated the fact that the dough was quick and easy to make.

I confess: I used preshredded mozerella and jarred tomato sauce, but that gives me something to work towards in the future…I just wasn’t up for making the tomato sauce from scratch that required 15 tomatoes!  Pizza is the perfect meal to make if your family is picky or can’t agree-its easy to put different toppings on each section of the pizza.  Plus it can be vegetarian!