Off to a good start . . .

No rain in the near future but I'm going to enjoy the temperate temperatures. It encourages my daily walk around the church before Mass. On the way home, I treated my altar boy (young man, actually!) son to a StarBucks and he did the unspeakable . . . He convinced me that I needed one, too. My justification is that compared with his extra-large drink, my medium one didn't look that big! I figure I will wear off a lot of calories hand washing the clothing again today.

Tomorrow, we have high hopes of finding a washer in an affordable price range that can be delivered soon! I've informed the family that I do not handwash blue jeans. Yesterday, I actually managed to hand wash two medium loads of laundry. As always happens, the machine broke when we had a minor back up of dirty clothing.

Meatless Friday so I'm making cheese pizza for dinner. This is one meal everyone will agree on happily. I have a lot of friends who consider their pizza homemade because they put on the sauce and cheese but use a store-bought crust. Given the cost of store-bought and homemade, they are having an expensive pizza. For the same cost, I can almost make two, large pizzas.

Pizza Crust Dough

1 tablespoon yeast
1/4 cup water to dissolve yeast
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil.

If you have a mixer, a dough hook will take care of this quickly. Just add everything, turn on the machine, and gradually add water (cold is fine) until the dough forms a ball around the hook.

If you are mixing by hand, put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, all the yeast, olive oil, and enough water to form a workable dough. You will have to knead the dough a bit more as the mixer does that for you in the above instructions.

You can use just about any kind of baking pan for your pizza. Personally, I like the round ones with the holes as they keep the crust crisp and brown a bit better to my thinking.

You can get two large pizzas from this recipe. Divide your dough in half and start stretching and pulling it to fit on whatever greased pan you are using. I go back and forth between the two pans as it give the dough time to rest a bit and it becomes easier to work with. When you have it formed to your specifications, form a bit of a rim and then go crazy with your sauce and toppings of choice.

I usually bake my pizzas at 450 degrees until the crust is brown and the filling is bubbling.