Pizza Recipe

I don't have a recipe because I cheat and use the stuff in a can - ha! However, I would recommend that you bake the crust for about 10 minutes or so before adding the toppings and cheese, then bake an additional 10-15 minutes. That should help with the undercooked crust.

To not get mushy middle, precook the crust a little as others have said and then be careful not put all of your ingredients in the middle! Spread them around on the outer edges more!

The best route we have found is to buy dough from a local pizza place. The chains usually won't sell it, but mom and pop places will. We usually pay $2 or less and the dough is already pre-sized for certain diameters.
If you want to do this a lot, buy a pizza stone and peel (wooden paddle-like thing with a long handle). This will take some practice.
Crank the oven to 500, like JB said. If you are using a stone, leave the stone in the oven as it pre-heats. You want the stone to be very hot, that makes the dough crispy on the bottom. sprinkle the stone with cornmeal. This will make a huge mess in your oven. You can avoid that by putting a cookie sheet on the rack under the stone. Stretch your dough out by gradually pulling around the edges. Tossing/spinning in the air helps to get it nice and round. Sprinkle the peel with cornmeal and put the dough on it. Spread with sauce and add cheese and toppings. Don't use non-fat cheese, it doesn't melt right. Cook any meats that you use before baking the pizza. Raw sausage on a pizza is a good way to get food poisoning, ask my DH! You can get bricks of mozzarella at Costco and shred it yourself. Pre-shredded can be a bit dry. I like olives (black, green, kalamata, etc), pine nuts, mushrooms, and goat cheese on mine. DH likes pepperoni (Hormel or Boar's Head) and Italian sausage (spicy). Once you have your pizza finished on the peel, use the peel to place the pizza onto the hot stone in the oven. This is tricky! The cornmeal keeps the pizza from sticking to the peel. Bake for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it- the cheese should be totally melted and a bit browned, the crust should be golden. You can use the peel to lift up the edge of the pizza to be sure the bottom is golden as well (but not brown). Use the peel like a giant spatula to remove the pizza from the oven. Let it cool for a few minutes before slicing with a pizza wheel. If you don't want to mess with the peel, you can use a cookie sheet. The best pan to use is a perforated cookie sheet, as the crust cooks more evenly. We do pizza all the time, DH used to work at a pizza place :)

Homemade Pizza (This is a thinner crust, delicious pizza!)

Crust:
1 packet Quick Rise Yeast
½ cup Luke warm water
½ tsp. Salt
1 Tbsp. Oil
1½ cup Flour

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Dissolve yeast in water. Stir in salt and oil. Add flour to make into dough. Kneed dough in bowl to incorporate all flour. Grease pizza pan with light coating of oil. Pat out dough. Rub a light coating of oil to top of crust. Poke holes in crust with fork.
Bake crust at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Pizza:
1 jar Pizza Quick Sauce
½ lb. Mild Italian Sausage, browned
Pepperoni, sliced
½ med Onion, chopped
½ med Green Pepper, chopped
Mushrooms sliced or 1 can
2 cups Mozzarella Cheese

Layer crust with sauce, meat, veggies and cheese.
(Or toppings of your choice.)
Bake again at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

I buy the pizza dough in the rolls by biscuits and butter.

I use Jimmy Dean Sage roll sausage. I crumble it up in a saucepan and cook it on low heat so it is all the way done but not browned. I sometimes will cook chopped onion and/or mushrooms with this meat too or saute' them in the left over grease when the meat is dumped out to drain.

I put the rolled out dough on my pizza stone then I bake it about half the time required.

I take it out and cover it with butter then sprinkle on some garlic powder. I put some grated mozzarella cheese on the garlic butter mix so the other toppings will sort of stick to the crust and not make a mess falling off.

Then I take a handful off the cooled off Jimmy Dean Sage cooked Sausage/onion/mushroom and sprinkle it over the garlic butter sauce and mozzarella cheese. I then put more mozzarella cheese on top and put it back in the over and bake it until all the cheese is melted on top. The meat is pre-cooked, the crust is over half way cooked before adding the toppings so now it will finish cooking and not be hard from over cooking, and we take it out and eat eat eat.

Have you looked in a cookbook, or googled for pizza recipes? I have always used the box crust from the grocery store, or bought pizza dough from Trader Joes. They have the best crust in the refrigerated section (it is uncooked you have to spread it out in your pizza pan). Their pizza sauce is good as well. Sorry I didn't answer the exact quesiton you had, I have just never made it from scratch like that. Have you partially cooked the crust, BEFORE you added the toppings? Maybe that would jumpstart everything and you wouldn't have a mushy middle part. As for toppings, always make sure you cook the meats before you put them on, except for the pepperoni. And I have used mozzarella, and different italian cheeses on our pizzas, as well as any veggie I have on hand, and we love chunk pineapple on ours too.

Any pizza dough should work the same. The key is to put your oven up to 550 degrees or as high as it will go (mine only goes to 500) and cook it on the bottom rack. A pizza stone helps to cook an even, crispy crust but it's not necessary. My stone broke a while ago and I have been cooking on a round cookie sheet and it's been fine. A one pound ball of dough makes two 12-inch round pizzas - if you use too much dough, it won't cook right and you have to use a different technique.

I use store-bought dough or sometimes make my own. I don't love any of the recipes I've tried and find that the grocery store dough is easier to work with so I would go with that. I use cornmeal, matzo meal or semolina flour when I pound out the dough into a circle. For sauce, I either make my own from crushed tomatoes and spices or use Ragu Light, which has no added sugar and had a nice fresh flavor. I then use a bagged "pizza blend" cheese or mozzarella and add some parmesan, some seasoning, sometimes some Feta cheese etc. For toppings, you can use any meat or veggies you want. I usually pre-cook veggies like broccoli but onions, peppers and mushrooms will cook right on the pizza. You can crumble sausage and hamburger and those will cook on the pizza too. If you use chicken, I would pre-cook that first.

The key, though, is a HOT oven and cooking as close to the bottom as you can so that the dough gets crispy and the toppings don't burn. If you can pre-heat you pan and then move the finished pizza into the pan using a pizza board then that's even better but it's hard to do that unless you've worked in a pizza shop so I wouldn't recommend it - just build your pizza on your pan or stone and then put it in the bottom of the oven.

We make individual size pizza all the time. My kids love being able to put their own toppings on. The pizza we make is far from gourmet, but it is a quick and easy dinner. We use several different things for the crust. My kids (3 and 5) love to use the Pepperidge Farms Goldfish bread for crust. It's a fun shape and just the right amount for them. We sometimes buy premade crusts at the grocery store (usually found by the pizza sauce). I like to use flat bread, English muffins, Naan, or even flour tortilla shells. We usually buy pizza sauce in the squeeze bottle, but we have also used spaghetti sauce in a pinch. I like to use pesto or salsa for a little different taste. My kids like Canadian bacon and my husband likes pepperoni so I usually buy that. I like to use left over chicken on mine. I always used cooked meats. My kids love black olives, but my husband and I will use lots of other vegetables. You can use any kind of mushroom--raw or sauteed. We also use green olives, bell peppers (all colors), mild hot peppers (like banana peppers), hot peppers (like jalapeno), broccoli, carrots, onion, minced garlic, really any veggies that we might have in the house. I have used raw veggies or left over steamed or roasted veggies. If the veggies are cooked you get a little different flavor. We use mozzarella cheese, but my kids also like to put shredded cheddar on it. I like to put feta cheese on mine. I will usually sprinkle a little basil and/or oregano on the sauce to boost the flavor too. With individual pizzas, we usually put them in at 375 or 400 for just 5-15 minutes (depending on how thin the crust is and how many toppings you have on it--usually just long enough to heat it and melt the cheese). I have a pizza pan that has holes in the bottom of it that help to make the crust crisp. Like I said, our pizza is nothing fancy, but it is fun to make and quick!

We precook the crust at 375 for about 10 minutes before we top it. We use a pizza stone and the crust is fairly thin. The crust we use is from the kitchen aid mixer recipe book - but it's just a basic pizza dough recipe. Yeast, water, bread flour, oil, and a little salt & sugar.

We use Ragu pizza sauce and top with just mozz cheese for the kids. For us - my fav is leftover chicken fajitas with red & green peppers (precooked) or shredded chicken breast tossed in buffalo wing sauce w/mozz cheese.

This is how my mom did it when we grew up...and how we do it now.

Ingredients:
Rhodes frozen bread/pizza dough (comes 3 in a packet- you get it in the frozen section).
Pizza sauce - this is important. Can make or break your pizza :). you need to experiment with sauce you like. Our favorite is the trader Joel's pizza sauce.
Block of mozzarella cheese- shred it.

Optional (ones we like/use)
Pepperoni
Sausage
Tomatoes
Olives
Garlic
Peppers
Pineapple
Spinach

To bake:

The night before- take one frozen loaf for each pizza out of freezer and put in middle of cookie sheet (we spray with non stick olive oil spray). Put sarran wrap (also sprayed with the non stick spray) over the loaf of bread and then on top of that put a damp towel. Leave out over night and the next day so bread rises.

Night of pizza:

Spread dough on cookie sheet. Bake according to package for 10 min (think its 400). You MUST cook the Dough a bit first so it's not mushy.

Take out of oven and let cool a bit.
Put pizza dough, cheese and toppings on.

Bake again until crust is golden brown.

Yum