Perfecting Pizza!

About 25 years ago, or so, I began my long journey of searching for the perfect homemade pizza. So, David and I traveled out of town to a huge cooking store that had hundreds of must-have cookware, bake ware, and utensils for the professional and home cook. I bought a pizza stone and peel and felt like now I could do it--make the perfect pizza! My first recipe for dough began with Julia Child's book The Way to Cook. I love that book; the pages are stained, creased and ruffled. I've tried numerous dough recipes (I'll get into sauce later--that's a whole other issue) throughout the years, some with all-purpose flour, some with all bread flour, some with olive oil, some without, some with milk, well you get the drift. And now that I've tried many, many pizza dough recipes, I think I'm almost ready to return to hers. But first I'm going to do a little more experimenting.

These 3 pizzas I made using a pizza dough recipe from Gabriele Corcos and Debi Mazar of the cooking show "Extra Virgin."

Homemade pizza sauce, yellow and green bell peppers, sliced red onion, Italian sausage, Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses

Homemade pizza sauce, yellow and green bell peppers, sliced red onion, Italian sausage, mushrooms, black olives, fresh tomatoes, Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses

Pesto sauce, artichokes, black olives, Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses

Pizza dough recipe:
1 pkg. dry active yeast
1/2 C. lukewarm water
4 C. bread flour
1 1/2 t. salt
3/4 C. cold water
1/4 C. olive oil, plus more for bowl
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the yeast, lukewarm water, and 1/2 C. bread flour. Mix well and let sit until bubbly, about 30 minutes.
Whisk together the remaining 3 1/2 C. bread flour and salt in another bowl so it will be evenly distributed.
Once the yeast mixture is nice and bubbly and looks like foamy beer, add 3/4 C. cold water and olive oil. Using a dough hook, turn the mixer on and add the flour in increments.
Mix the dough for about 5 minutes, until the dough starts creeping up the dough hook and comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Place the dough in a large bowl lightly greased with olive oil. Turn to coat all sides of the dough with oil. Cover the bowl loosely with a clean tea towel. Let rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours. Punch dough down, and let rise another hour.
Divide the dough into 4 equal disks. Lightly flour a work surface. Using your fingers or heels of your hands stretch the disks out to a 10-inch round.
Repeat with remaining 3 pizza dough disks.

I thought this was a very good recipe with a few considerations. Maybe because we live in a high altitude state (I did not adjust for that) is the reason the dough was a little crumbly--not the nice smooth dough I'm used to. In fact, I almost threw it out because it looked like a booger monster (Lol, sorry)! But my husband David said to try it, and you can see from the results that it turned out very well. Also, I did want a crisp crust, which I got from this, but I think next time I will use half bread flour and half all-purpose flour to see if I can get just a little chew. The flavor, however, was excellent! I also used my pizza stone (I don't always), placed on the lowest oven shelf and I really liked the results I got.