Homemade Pizza

If you live in the southwest or plan a trip to Arizona (or if you even live there and haven't been) you must stop in and eat at Pizzaria Bianco. It is in downtown Phoenix and you will eat the best pizza in the US. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Check it out here.

Okay, on to my next point. In college my husband worked at a little pizzaria/deli flipping pizzas. Not for Chris Bianco, of course, but he did learn how to make a great pizza and still loves to do so.

We start by using Chris Bianco's pizza dough recipe courtsey of Martha Stewart. Why wouldn't we?! It's thin, crisp, and salty! Since we don't have a brick oven in our kitchen we have to settle for pizza stone. I bought ours at Bed Bath and Beyond for a reasonable price.

My husband makes delicious homemade sauce and changes the toppings every time we make pizzas. He makes stretching the dough look easy but I've tried it and I'm not great at it! If you use patience you should do fine though.

One secret of his is to stretch the dough, ladle on the sauce, put on all toppings except cheese and bake at 550 degrees F on a pizza stone until sauce becomes a deep red color and crust is par-baked. Pull the pizza out of the oven and top with cheese. Put back in the oven and bake until cheese is bubbly and crust is a deep golden brown.

The pizza pictured above is spinach, onion, red bell pepper, mozzarella and feta cheese.