How to Make Pizza

Interested in cooking your own pizza instead of calling for delivery? Here's how to do it.

Ingredients:

• Pre-made or homemade dough
• 1 egg (as glaze)
• Tomato paste
• Grated cheese (usually mozzarella, romano, parmesan, or some combination)
• Olive oil (optional)
• Yeast
• Sifted flour
• Warm water
• Toppings can be almost anything you like, including:
  • Sliced pepperoni
  • Chopped onions
  • Green peppers
  • Sausage
  • Bacon or bacon bits
  • Chicken
  • Olives
  • Mushrooms
  • Ground beef
  • Ham
  • Pineapple

  Steps:

  1. Spread olive oil lightly over the crust to avoid burning.
  2. Spread tomato paste on your pizza dough.
  3. Add a sprinkling of cheese.
  4. Add any other toppings that you might enjoy.
  5. With a brush, add some egg to glaze all around the edges of your pizza dough.
  6. Place your pizza on an oven tray sprayed with olive oil. Do this so that the pizza doesn't stick.
  7. Put your pizza in the oven, and turn it down to about 160 degrees Celsius or 320 degrees Fahrenheit.
  8. Take it out after about 15 - 25 minutes, depending on your oven. Use your own judgment to tell when the pizza is ready. The cheese should be a golden brown, but it should not be burnt.
  Tips:
• Before you put your pizza in the oven, spray the pan with a bit of olive oil, for a crisper end-result. It also prevents it from sticking to the pan.
• If the crust and top are burnt before the inside is cooked enough, the temperature is too high. A thicker pizza needs lower temperatures so it cooks long enough to be done inside without burning the outside. You can turn up the heat or even broil the pizza briefly to brown the top, at the end, while eying it to avoid burning it.
• Normal cheese cubes are a cheaper alternative to mozzarella cheese. Just grate cheese cubes evenly over the pizza base surface.
• Keep in mind that this is only a very basic recipe for a pizza. When you are more experienced at making pizzas, change the recipe a little bit. For instance, instead of ham, use salami or something like that.
• For more nice crisp top, broil the top of your pizza. Remember, keep an eye on it! Keep it in the broiler for about two minutes. This process will make a nice golden top.
• If you extend the cheese further out than the tomato sauce and leave little gaps in the watery tomato-sauce layer through which the cheese can bond to the crust, the cheese layer will not slide off en masse so easily.
• Try Mascarpone cheese in the tomato sauce.
• Pre-bake the crust a little if you like it more evenly cooked through and done rather than soggy where it meets the sauce, like foccacia pizza.
• Instead of tomato sauce, you can use spaghetti sauce. (Source: www.wikihow.com)