Margherita Pizza

This is SUCH an easy recipe for pizza. It has super simple ingredients you probably already have in your pantry. Obviously, you can make any kind of pizza you want with the dough, but I'm a firm believer in keeping it simple when it comes to pizza. I should've added mushrooms, but whatever.

You can make your own sauce homemade, but I don't always have that much time on my hands with a 4 month old. Fancy, store bought sauce is just as good! Or, if Prego spaghetti sauce is all you have in your pantry, go for it. It works the same, I promise.

Ingredients:

(For the dough.. makes 2-4 pizzas depending on how thick you want your crust... made 3 medium pizzas with mine)
1 and 1/2 cups of warm water
4 cups of flour
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp of active dry yeast
1 tsp of salt
1/2 cup of olive oil

(for the pizza)
1/4 cup of pizza sauce
fresh Mozzarella cheese cut into about 1/4 inch slices
2 Roma tomatoes
Basil cut into thin strips
1 TBS melted butter

Directions:

(Make the dough 24 hours in advance.)
1. Dissolve yeast with warm water
2. In a mixer, add flour, salt, olive oil, and garlic and mix on low speed
3. Slowly add the yeast and water mixture
4. When mixed together, put dough into a large bowl coated with olive oil, cover with plastic wrap, and store in fridge for up to a week.

For the pizza, once the dough has risen.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees
1. Sprinkle dough with flour
2. Knead on a floured surface until dough is no longer sticky
3. Break apart in to 3 pieces and put unused dough back into bowl, cover, and put in fridge.
4. Grease a baking sheet with olive oil
5. Stretch out and press dough onto sheet, leaving edges a little thicker.
6. Put sauce on dough, leaving it off of the edges for the crust.
7. Place mozzarella slices and Roma tomato slices over sauce
8. Bake pizza for 11 minutes
9. Remove pizza from oven, add basil strips, and brush melted butter on the crust.

ENJOY! :)