Pizza Night

I recently bought some fresh Lou Malnati's pizza dough, so I decided to make a homemade pizza tonight for my daughter and I. She's had pizza a few times now, but not homemade.

I set the oven to 375 degrees. Then I brushed olive oil on my pizza pan. I let my pizza dough set out for a few minutes before working with it. It's best to roll it out on some flour before putting it on your pizza pan. I didn't want a really thin crust, so I didn't roll it out too much. I like a nice thick crust. Once I placed the dough on my pizza pan, I put a thin layer of 4 cheese pasta sauce on it. I sprinkled a little bit of oregano on the sauce. Topped the sauce with a little bit of shredded mozzarella cheese. Then I added some tomatoes, pepperoni, and little chunks of smoked mozzarella cheese. The smoked mozzarella cheese gives it a nice pop of flavor that you don't get from regular mozzarella. I baked the pizza for about 25 minutes or so, depends on your oven and how brown you like it. I like it to just be lightly browned on top and the cheese to be all melted. After I took the pizza out of the oven, I added some fresh basil to it. I put the basil on afterwords so it doesn't get too cooked down and dried out.

My daughter gets really impatient while waiting to eat. So while she was waiting, I gave her some grapefruit to eat and a couple ounces of a strawberry banana smoothie to drink. That seemed to tide her over until the pizza was done and cooled off a little bit. She gobbles food up so fast, it's hard to keep up with her. She's so active though, that you can't even tell how much she likes to eat.

Once the pizza cooled off, I broke up little pieces of it for Kayla and had a slice myself. I like the taste of the four cheese pasta sauce mixed with the other ingredients. And the crust is nice and thick around the edges, but it doesn't get too hard. The crust is a little crunchy on the outside, but soft in the middle, as it should be. Kayla gobbled it up and would have had more if I let her. We finished off our meal with a very small slice of a chocolate seven up cake. I would take credit for the cake, but it was store bought. I didn't have time to bake today since the little one had me up until 6:30 this morning. She is teething and sometimes doesn't sleep well at night. Hopefully, she'll be exhausted tonight so mommy can get some proper sleep. :)