Ahh, what a topic....
When I was a kid, Mom used to make the Chef Boyardee Pizza kit, and would supplement it with Hormel pepperoni. (The "pepperoni" pizza kit featured little microscopic flecks of pepperoni in the pizza sauce.)
As a college student cooking on my own, I did this sometimes. It wasn't long before I decided that the included cheese was lame--why not buy some real mozzarella to put on it? Wait, I'm buying separate pepperoni and separate cheese? How hard could it be to make the sauce? And the crust? .....
I have tried a basic pizza sauce crust out of the Betty Crocker cookbook, and it was OK. When things really took off was when I discovered a copy of
The Art of Pizza Making at a local kitchen store. Ahh now this explains how to make some REAL pizza dough. It's yummy, and always appreciated by the family.
But I don't have a mixer or anything. I knead it by hand. It takes about 1/2 hour to mix it and knead it, plus a couple hours or so for it to sit in the fridge. The latest wrinkle is to try a pizza stone. I like the results, though I have had some trouble getting the pizza onto the stone, but I just have to practice!!
In researching pizza stone techniques, one woman who did a web page on the subject said she stopped making crusts and just bought the dough from Trader Joe's, because she found it was as good as anything she could make. I haven't tried those yet, though. I have one of my crusts in the freezer waiting to go.
As far as toppings go, I like pepperoni, but I'm the only one of the family who does so I don't always have that. Plain cheese, or pineapple, or green peppers are popular.
Having said all that, we had Domino's for dinner tonight.
