Making Your Own Pizza Is Easier Than You Think

Want a great pizza? Try making your own.

I learned to make my own pizza from the flour on up in preparation for the kitchen at the bar I used to own. Ultimately it made more sense to buy the crusts, but a good homemade pizza can rock your world.

First off, get over the fact that your pizza has to meet any expectations at all. This was hard for me to get over at first, but a friend that worked at one of the top neighborhood pizza joints in town helped.

First off, the crust. I think the real secret is, you can use any bread that sounds good. You can make a pizza on some jalapeno bread or anything you like. If you want to start from scratch, the best thing you can do is pick up some Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast. Once you have that stuff, all you really need is flour, salt and water.  It's easy, mix it up and flatten it out into a pizza shape.

It's kind of optional, but a quick brushing of olive oil is good, but not necessary at all. From there it's onto the sauce. It is SO easy to complicate the sauce, but the fact is, that most people like very, very little sauce, and when you're using that little sauce, spending too much time on it doesn't even make sense. You can just puree some crushed tomatoes or use this simple recipe:

1 can tomato sauce

1 can tomato paste

1 teaspoon of oregano

1 teaspoon of garlic diced, minced or otherwise crushed up garlic.

This will make way more than you need, so prepare to freeze some for next time.

From there is all about the cheese. There's no reason to complicate this either, you can find mozzarella or even bags that say Italian cheese mix.

Add your toppings and bake. It's that simple.