1-2-3 Easy Pizza Dough

Its nice to have an off day after working all weekend long. The best part is that after working the weekend I’m off for a whole three days. I really enjoy my days of because it’s the time I get to be with my little, but not so little in stature family–Ava is almost 3 feet tall at just 18 months! Regardless, I had my whole day planned. First I was going to take my ring in to the jewelers to get a cleaning, then I was going for a Costco run, and after that have a mommy/tots’s lunch with Ava, and finally post 3 post that have been in my drafts for months–I know it’s terrible SMH. But like most planned days it totally didn’t happen LOL. I started my day waking up super early because I couldn’t sleep. So I watched an early morning movie, and when I finally got out of bed I made my third batch of this pizza dough recipe for my friend and her husband who are coming over to test the recipe tomorrow. Then I made Michael a pizza with my last batch of dough from my previous recipe test. I did my hair which took about took about too many hrs, natural hair problems, sigh. I never made it to costco, or the jewelers. I’ve been dying to have a coney island salad for the past 48 hours, so I convinced Michael to go with Ava and I to enjoy one. All that aside the most exciting thing we have been doing over here is trying to stencil my living room wall…in my mind I’m an interior designer LOL.

I love decorating and wish I had all the disposable income for all the decorating I would like to do. I think most women would agree that would be an awesome luxury. So it seemed like a really good idea when I thought of it, as I had already painted my dining room a beautiful mustard-like yellow. I’m almost done with it, so far I think its gorge, maybe its just my opinion, anyway in my dining room I have this beautiful yellow color called Davici’s Canvas by Benjamin Moore. It makes the room so nice and bright; I will share pics soon. Though the paint was a bit on the expensive side, it has no voc’s, which was my main concern with Ava. As a mom I pretty much worry about everything to do with her, so I went ahead in shelling out the money for it. Since I used that paint in the dining room, I had to find the same brand of paint to compliment the living room paint. I ended up picking one called Soft Chincilla, that is a soft really pretty blue. Needless to say, I was super excited to finally stencil after having in hand the stencil pattern since last July. Now the day has finally come to get to work and my BFF (who shall remain nameless LOL), stopped by the house to assist. Bless her heart–as Michael’s mom always likes to say–but she is not the greatest painter, haha. On the bright side, at least she was willing to help, which is something you can’t always say about everyone. We started to stencil after spending a ton of time trying to figure out the best way to go about it. The first one we did I turned out well, then we got to the second one and all hell broke loose! Somehow we threw off the pattern, sigh, and we just couldn’t figure it out. It was actually quit agonizing, despite only just starting. So after a good two hours with two so-so columns we gave up and just painted the surrounding wall. I love her but she needs painting lessons, as well as cooking ones. She hates cooking with me because she says I’m mean and bossy (haha), but I like to call it particular. Anyhow, now she hates painting with me too…but she will get over it. As it stands now Michael decided that we needed to start over, so with the frosty white background paint he covered over the columns we stenciled in order to reset. This time with a leveler made specifically for stenciling, we measured the wall and started in the middle and top, which was a much better idea. If you you never done it before, stenciling is very time consuming and we still haven’t finished. Since I’ve been at work we will have to attempt again tomorrow. To me, thus far it looks really pretty and I think even though its tedious, in the end the struggle will be worth the effort.

Now having all of that out the way, let me tell you about this pizza recipe. I mean I love pizza, who the heck doesn’t right? Arguably one of the world’s favorite eats. It’s really hard to get pizza at home like you would in the restaurants, but after trying many different recipes and tweaking and tweaking more, learning about pizza hydration (ratio of flour to water percentage), I feel I finally have something that makes my never want to order pizza again. Strong statement I know, but I’m proud of my homemade pizza dough. Best part is that it is as simple as pizza should be. Using every day ingredients in your kitchen, you will know exactly what you are putting in it. The dough is made in a matter of minutes, and just needs to sit in the refrigerator at least 24 hrs. Lucky for you, I made pizza for 5 days straight to determine when the dough was at it’s best. I came to the conclusion that although the dough was great at 24-48 hrs, it’s at its best between 72-96 hrs. After sitting for that amount of time the dough comes out crispier. To make thin crust you want it at 84-96 hrs, and stretch it out a little thinner. This dough is so good, heck it’s amazing in my book. Try it and you wont be disappointed. Be on the lookout, as I’ll be tweaking it for calzones and a Detroit-style pizza. So try this recipe, don’t pass it up. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

xoxo,

This African