MIY Monday #1. Better Than Pizza Hut!

Happy Monday friends! As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I am going to start my own blog-along titled "Make it Yourself Mondays" or MIY Mondays. If you want to join just fill out the linky below so you can share what you have done. I also have a cute banner if you want it also.

My MIY Mondays's Mission is share creative, innovative, fun and (hopefully) cheap ideas and projects for you home and life, as well as healthy and (hopefully) cheaper alternatives to everyday cooking, shopping and eating out. I hope you will join in my on my mission!

So for my first ever MIY Monday I want to share with you this amazing pizza I had the experience of trying this weekend. Ivy, my blogging and letter buddy, came up for the weekend to help me move in and have some fiber fun. Along with that, we decided we wanted to cook a homemade dinner and decided on veggie pizza!

Our cooking adventure started at the Local Farmer's Market, where we picked up mushrooms, squash and broccoli for our toppings, and then Dillons for the dough, tomatoes and cheese. Using all these ingredients, plus a few more staples, we were able to make up some very delicious pizza. I present to you the recipe to our success!

 Fiber Friends Homemade Veggie Pizza.

Ingredients (makes 3, about 8 slice pizzas, can reduce amounts if needed)

-Lenders frozen white bread loaves, pack of 3 (or any type of froze bread dough loafs from the store)

-3 cans of whole tomatoes

-Fresh or dried Basil to taste

-Fresh or dried Oregano to taste

-Salt and pepper to taste

-Fresh or dried Garlic (equivalent of 4 cloves, plus extra for brushing on later)

-Olive Oil

-Mozzarella cheese, or cheese of choice

-Veggies! We used yellow squash and mushrooms (had planned on using broccoli but ended up forgetting about it until it was too late)

Step 1:

Begin by making the sauce. We followed this recipe for our sauce and it turned out amazing!

The sauce begins by browning the garlic in olive oil, and then adding your basil and oregano, followed by the tomatoes which are then cooked until the thickness of your liking.  We did ours for at least 30 minutes and it was still a bit thin, but turned out amazing.

Ok...we burned the garlic on the first try. Just FYI to everyone to keep a close eye on it!

Yum! Tomatoes! And the basil was fresh my aunt's garden, which made this even better!

Step 2:
This is where having a partner can help, but isn't necessary. While the sauce is being made, spread out your dough on a pan. I noticed that I had to knead it quite a bit first since the dough we were using was originally intended to be baked as a loaf and not spread out. But with much kneading and pulling and stretching, it will be a success! The dough as it turns out is perfect for making pizzas.

Since it didn't seem like they would combine well together, and we had plenty of stuff, we went ahead and used all three loaves and made 3 pizzas!

By making the bottom thinner than the sides, we got a doughy yet amazing crust!

Step 3:

At this point, prepare your veggies. It's a pretty self explainatory step, basically involving a bit of chopping and slicing. The yellow squash we got was absolutely amazing, and the mushrooms we had picked out were massive! YUM!

Another idea we decided to do was to coat the bread dough in a mixture of olive oil and garlic (seen in the cup above) which added an extra brown to the pizza as well as making it that much tastier! We also prepared more fresh basil to put on top!

Step 4:

By now you should be ready to pre-heat your oven (we didn't do it sooner because we didn't want to waste energy). Set it to the instructions on the bread dough bag, ours was 350 degrees. While this was happening, we sauced and topped the pizza. An idea my Mom introduced me to with homemades pizzas is to do sauce, then cheese, then toppings, then more cheese. It keeps the toppings from sticking to the crust and also just tastes better.

Almost baking time!

Step 5: 

Place in oven (when oven is ready) and watch carefully. Every pizza is different, but ours only took about 15-20 minutes to bake, and our crust was crispy on the bottom and soft on the edges. It really comes down to how you like your crust done.

SO CLOSE!

Step 6:

When you think it's at the point you want to eat it, take it out and enjoy! And what can go better with homemade pizza than a nice beer? Or in our case, hard cider, which is pretty much the greatest thing ever!

Ready to cut!

'Bon Appetite!

This was by far the best pizza I've ever had and Ivy agreed completely with me? What made is so amazing? I think it was the sauce with the seasoning and fresh basil, as well as coating the crust in olive oil and garlic. Just a couple secrets I plan to do from now on for my pizzas!

I hope you all enjoyed me very first MIY Monday! If you want to join in, just fill out Mr. Linky and feel free to take my banner! I can't wait to see what you guys may have up your sleeves!

In other news, I started Tour de Fleece yesterday and although I wanted to get .5 oz done a day, this seems like a very unlikely goal. I spun for TWO HOURS and only got .3 oz done! Yikes! I will keep on spinning though! Expect some photos tomorrow for sure!

~Lisa