Sunday's Plate

Making a pizza is not hard. If you have never worked with yeast, it's time you did. Yeast doesn't bite. The only thing you can do to yeast is kill it. Don't kill it.

Making a pizza requires three things: a pan large enough to bake it; a very hot oven; and cheese-- lots and lots of cheese ;-}

First thing: preheat your oven to 450 degrees. I'm afraid of that kind of heat at school, so I use 400, and I cook my pizzas a little longer. You might put your rack on the lowest rung because you want to cook your pizza from the bottom.

Second thing, run hot tap water and heat a large bowl by letting hot tap water run into about two minutes. Then, run tap water to the degree that you would bathe a baby. Let your wrist be the indicator. Pour 1 cup into your warm bowl. Then sprinkle a package of dry yeast onto the warm water. You can stir this or just let it sit for about five minutes. It will create a sponge. I use a little sugar at this point to feed the yeast.

You will need three tablespoons of oil and about a teaspoon of salt. Add two cups of flour and stir. Add another half cup of flour and punch the dough again and again until all the flour is absorbed and the stuff is dough. At this point, you can let it rise or you can use it right away. If you let it rise, you will have two pizzas in about an hour.

Flour a pizza stone, a cookie sheet, or a pizza pan.

Roll the dough out with a rolling pin and don't forget to use a little flour to keep the dough from getting sticky. When the dough is large enough to fit on your pan, fold it in half and half again, lift and place on your pan and unfold. Do this quickly.

Now it's the fun part. Take any kind of sauce you have and place it on the dough covered board. I use blue cheese dressing and salsa combo. My favorite is left over spaghetti sauce. You can use canned tomato sauce or even ranch dressing.

Next step is the cheese. Use a lot of cheese and leave some of the dough exposed to prevent the cheese from melting over the edge of your pan.

Now it's time to experiment. Anything you like on your pizza goes on now.

Bake for about 12 minutes. When the top is beginning to brown it's ready to eat.