Mediterranean Style Pizza

This was my first time making pizza and it came together pretty well! My parents had an extra pizza stone lying around and gave it to me ages ago, and of course a sweltering 95 degree day seemed the perfect time to turn my oven up to 500 degrees. I'm excited to start making more pizza with different toppings. Now I just need to find the pizza cutter that I thought I had.

I'm making spaghetti and meatballs tomorrow, so I made the sauce from this recipe to cover the pizza and the pasta, but you can use your own sauce, or store bought sauce, as well as store bought pizza dough, to quicken things up. I made the pizza dough as well ... it was super easy, but you do need to let it rise for a bit, so it's not exactly the quickest option.  I'll include the pizza dough recipe below.


Pizza Dough
From: Smitten Kitchen
* This recipe is for a small-sized, thin crust pizza. I made a medium sized pizza, so I doubled the recipe - and I have some dough leftover. You can always 1 1/2 or double the recipe for a thicker crust or a larger pizza. 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water (and up to 2 tablespoons more)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Cooking spray
Cornmeal

1. Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and then stir in water and olive oil. Add the little bit of extra water if the mixture seems to try to come together. 

2. Empty the crumbly mixture onto a lightly floured surface and knead everything into a ball.  If this is hard to do, leave the dough under the bowl for a few minutes and come back; the dough will come together more easily.

3. Knead the dough for a minute or two. Spray the same bowl with cooking spray and roll the ball of dough around in the bowl until it is coated on all sides. Cover the ball in plastic wrap and let sit for 1-2 hours, until it has doubled in size.

4. Next, press the air pockets out of the dough with your palms and let it sit in the plastic wrap for another 20 minutes.

5. Sprinkle a pizza stone or baking sheet with cornmeal and preheat your oven to its highest temperature. Roll the dough out onto the pizza stone or baking sheet and add a layer of sauce and then toppings. Bake for 10-12 minutes until the crust starts slightly bubbling. (I found I needed to keep my pizza in the oven for a few more minutes, 500 degrees is my oven's highest temperature).


Smushing the crumbly mixture into a ball:

 Doubled in size with air pockets:

Roll it on out:

Mediterranean Style Pizza
From: For the Love of Cooking

Ingredients
*For toppings - use however much of each that you prefer

Pizza dough
Tomato sauce
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Baby spinach
Kalamata olives, sliced
Black olives, sliced
Sundried tomatoes
Feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
1 clove garlic, minced
Dash of oregano

1. Spread sauce evenly over pizza dough and add toppings. Bake on oven's highest temperature for 10-14 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling. Let cool for a few minutes before slicing and serving.

Ready to go:

Sliced: