Best Homemade Pizza Crust That I have Ever Put Together!!!

My favorite place to eat pizza has always been Pizza Hut. I still maintain that they have the best thin crust around. But when we needed a crust to make for Leighlyn's friends for her slumber party, I went a-lookin' for something that sounded good that I could produce in our bread machine. Eventually, I came across this and we LOVE it!!! I'll give this to you along with the machine directions because that is the only way that I know how to make most of my bread recipes. If you are a seasoned bread baker, I am sure that you will know what to do with these ingredients!!!

By the way, this is the first pizza crust that I have found that calls for eggs. Eggs help to really richen the flavor and help to add moisture to the crust. I think that you'll like it!!!

1 cup of water that is the same temperature that you would give to a baby
3 tablespoons olive, canola or vegetable oil
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt

3 1/2 to 4 cups of all purpose flour

4 teaspoons or 1 package of active dry yeast

In a small bowl, stir all of the first 4 ingredients. Pour into the bottom of your bread machine. Cover this mixture with your flour. Top it off with the yeast.

Push the DOUGH button. You will NOT be baking this in the machine. Soon after the machine has gone to work, your ingredients will form a ball. If by chance it has not, add just enough flour until it does. This should be done with just a little flour at a time. If the ball is not bouncing off of all sides of the pan, add a tiny bit more flour.

Allow the yeast to remain in the bread machine for another 20-30 minutes.

Dust your bread board or counter top with a light cover of flour. If you will be making just a couple round pizzas, cut your dough in half with your hands. Leave it whole if you'll be making one large square or rectangular pizza. If need be, you can divide this dough into 8 pieces which can be used for personal pizzas.

Whatever you decided upon, lay that first piece or the only piece of dough out on the flour. Roll it out to the necessary size and thickness with a bpie crust roller.

Grease your pan(s) that you will be using. Put that crust onto it/them.

Drizzle each crust with your pizza sauce. Making sure that the sauce covers all of the crust except for the bottom which is touching the pan. If you do not do this, your un-sauced crust will probably come out of the oven dry and brittle. We always buy the bottled pizza sauce from the grocery store. In the past, we went all out and made our sauce from scratch. We wound up soending a good deal of money on spices that we normally did not use that would just set around. W could see no difference between the store bought version and our homemade recipe. Please do whatever you choose!

We always have plenty of shredded mozzerella cheese on hand for our pizzas. Some people use pizza blended cheese. That is great also! Other toppings that you might be interested in trying are hamburger, pork sausage, Italian sausage, canadian bacon, pepperoni, chopped onions, chopped green pepper, chopped jalapeno peppers, chopped black olives, anchovies, etc.

If topping with hamburger or sausages, you need to brown them in a skillet before placing them on your pizza. We always add our chopped onions to the raw meat so that they cook together. This adds much better flavor and the onions are more tender. Drain before placing on the crust.

Remember to put your meats on first and spread them as you would the rest of the toppings, all over the crust. If you really want a lot of meat on your pizza, put it on now. Your cheese should be the last ingredient put on the pizza.

Place in oven for 10-12 minutes or until the very edges of the crust are golden. Remove from oven and place on a heat-safe surface. Cut into however many wedges you want to serve of this particular pizza. Allow your guests some grated or shredded parmesan cheese that they can put on their pizza if they want to.

Enjoy!

VLE-B