recipe: simple & easy margherita pizza

Happy National Pizza Day!

In honor of (one of my) favorite days of the year, I wanted to share this really quick and easy recipe for margherita pizza. It’s halfway between a complete cheat day (i.e. Domino’s night, otherwise known as study-until-2-am-finals-night) and a full Gordon Ramsey, everything-from-scratch night.

It’s cheesy, it’s crispy, it’s just the right amount of tangy and basil-y — hope you guys love it as much as we do!

Ingredients

For the pizza dough:

•  all-purpose flour (2 and 3/4 cups)
• granulated sugar (1 tsp)
• active dry yeast (1/2 tsp)
• kosher salt (1/2 tsp)
• warm water (1 cup)
• extra virgin olive oil (1 tbs)

Other ingredients:

• store-bought pizza sauce of your choice (or if you want to make your own, I’d recommend this recipe from Joy Food Sunshine)
• fresh basil (~10 large basil leaves, thinly sliced)
• grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese (3 tbs)
• fresh mozzarella (as much as you’d like [personally, I’m a HUGE cheese lover], cut into 1/2 inch cubes)

Recipe

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the flour, sugar, yeast and salt.

2. Next, add the warm water and olive oil, and mix until the dough has come together. (You may have to do some work on your own here, but you should end up with a smooth dough).

3. Place dough into a well-oiled bowl and let prove for about two hours.

4. Preheat oven to the highest setting (my oven goes up to 550F). Now, I don’t have a pizza stone, so I just used a regular baking sheet.

5. Divide dough into 2.

6. Take one piece, and roll out to about a 10 in circle of pizza.

7. Brush the pizza with about 1 tsp of olive oil.

8. Add about 1/2 cup of the pizza sauce, and spread across the dough in a thin and even manner. Leave about 1 inch empty from the edge.

9. Add half of the grated cheese, the mozzarella, and about a quarter of the basil leaves.

10. Repeat steps 6-9 for the second pizza.

11. Bake both for about 7 minutes.

12. Enjoy for a simple dinner!