Home-made Pizza Crust

I've made lots of home-made dough for pizza crusts in my bread machine.  In fact, this week alone we had home-made pizza twice.  For a week night meal, we made taco pizza.  I make the dough the night before, coat the dough in a little olive oil, put the oiled dough in a gallon-sized plastic bag with a zip-closure, and place it in the refrigerator. 

For the taco pizza, we use Ortega brand mild taco sauce instead of tomato sauce.  We top the sauce with grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese and bake the pizza at 450 degrees Fahrenheit until done.  At the table, we top our pizza slices with crushed up corn tortilla chips, shredded lettuce, as well as diced tomatoes, red onion, and avocado. 

Tonight, we had more traditional Italian-style pizza.  Well, I should say my husband and I had traditional Italian-style pizza.  Our son did his own thing; he topped his half of the dough with Cholula Hot Sauce, extra-sharp cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, turkey pepperoni, and lots of freshly ground black pepper and garlic powder... interesting, huh?  Here's a picture of my son's culinary creation.

HOME-MADE PIZZA

My husband and I topped our half of the dough with 1 cup of jarred spaghetti sauce (we use Bertolli Brand Organic Traditional Tomato & Basil sauce), cooked hot Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese, dried Italian herbs, garlic powder, and crushed red pepper flakes.  Sorry, no photo of our pizza... my husband was REALLY hungry by the time our pizza came out of the oven. We cook the pizza's separately so they cook evenly.  Here's a great pizza crust recipe for your bread machine:

Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour or bread flour ***
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons yeast (I use Fleishman's Brand bread machine yeast)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried Italian herbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Place ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order listed (I place the oil and the herbs in the corners).  Set bread machine to "dough" setting.

*** You may substitute up to 1 cup of the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour.  I snuck in a bit of whole wheat pastry flour today and the boys did not notice.