Library Cookbook: Jamie Oliver at Home: Pizza from scratch (dough and sauce)

Zachary has been a great help in the kitchen lately.  I thought I'd start including him in a bit more of the cooking.  Here he is proudly posing by his first pizza creation!

So the other day while trying to escape the oppressive heat here in Texas, Zachary and I were at storytime at the local library.  A friend of his was there too, so off they went to learn about dinosaurs.  This left me a bit of browsing time.  After looking at the cds, dvds, and kids books that I thought he might like, I stumbled upon the food section.  They had TONS of cookbooks.  Some old, some new.

I checked of Jamie Oliver's At Home.

I love his whole overall rustic, disheveled look, and the recipes in this book are quite rustic, hearty, earthy, and quite frankly a big hit.

Among many other things, he had a section on pizzas.  

Great time to get Zachary involved with making his own pizza.

Dough recipe was time consuming, letting the yeast rise and all, but the crust turned out nice and sweet and crisp. I need an alternative to the flour I used on my counter to prevent sticking, as it was a bit flour tasting, but overall a slam dunk.

Here they are resting and waiting for final stretching.

Dutchie made Jamie's easy tomato sauce, which can easily be converted for spaghetti, lasagna or for our purpose, pizza sauce.  This was simple and very fresh, plus we got to use some of our garden oregano and basil.

Here are the doughs all shaped out and ready for some toppings

Dutchie cut up several toppings that you would feed a rabbit....

...and I cooked the italian sausage and added pepperoni to the mix.

I did choose the turkey pepperoni to at least attempt some healthy aspect.

So choosing from fresh basil, baby bella mushy rooms, sliced onion, roma tomatoes, pepperoni, italian sausage, black olives and fresh sliced mozzarella, we each set out to create our masterpiece.

Zachary thinks he is off to an early lead.  Look at that smug, confident look on his face.

Here is an artsy shot of Zachary's pie

This veggie delight is Dutchie's creation.  Half margherita and half veggie combo

I thought long and hard and came up with a half margherita and half....well....everything we had!!!

Needless to say, this blog isn't called Dutchie's blog, or "What Zachary Likes about Pizza"

So I hereby declare myself the winner and still feeder of flock!!!!!

I was amazed at how easy it was to create this, from scratch, including things from our garden, with just a little planning.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to justify going out for pizza again.  PPPFFFFTTT on Dominos, Pizza Hut, Pappa Johns and any of the other chains, which we had long since abandoned for more upscale pizza (so they say) like Red Brick, Roma's and our local favorite Palio's Pizza Cafe.  

Anyone ever had a Godfather's Pizza???

;)