About 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, Millie looked at me and said “What’s for dinner?” and I said, “Well, I have about 8 tabs open of recipes I want to cook, what are you in the mood for?” She said “Pizza,” and that was that.

I had been wanting to try homemade pizza crust with some of the Fat Tire we bought in Chattanooga, so I googled a recipe for fast beer pizza crust.

The Dough

• 4 5 cups flour (More on this)
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups room-temperature beer (Which is 12 oz, why not just say that?)
• Williams-Sonoma pizza seasoning (Awesome to have it go in the mix)

I used Fat Tire for the beer, which is awesome. I put all of this into our stand mixer with the dough hook and let it go for about 3 minutes.

Some notes:

The recipe calls for four cups of flour, use at least five. The dough was very sticky when it came out of the mixer and I kept adding flour until I got it not sticky. So, add more flour.

Once it’s finished, glaze a small bowl with olive oil, put the dough in, cover and let rise for 90 minutes-2 hours.

Cook the pizza for 3 minutes without toppings, add toppings, return to oven.

Before we start…If you make any sort of pizza at home, be it Digornio or something like this, you need a pizza stone. Pizza stones distribute heat more evenly, give your pizza a flat surface to cook on and are just all around awesome to have.

The ingredients for the pizza were:

• Sliced zucchini – Sauted with pepper and olive oil
• Mount Olive roasted red peppers, sliced into strips
• Fresh mozzarella, sliced thin
• Spinach – Sauteed for about 30 seconds (it wilts on its own in the oven)
• Kraft Mexican shredded cheese
• Shaved parmesan
• Dei Fratellia Pizza Sauce

Pro Tip:
When rolling out dough for a pizza I’ve found that yellow corn meal is much better than flour for making sure the dough doesn’t stick to your surface. Flour on the bottom of the pizza has a burnt chalky taste when it comes out of the oven, but I can’t taste the cornmeal after the pizza has been cooked.

Cooking

• Put pizza stone in oven, preheat to 500 degrees
• Roll dough into circle, curl edges for a crust, press dough to desired thickness (We use a pizza peel for easy transfer to the pizza stone, but I’ve read where parchment paper works as well?)
• Put your sauce on and put the pizza in the oven for about 2-3 minutes.
• Remove pizza, apply rest of toppings, return to oven
• Bake for 8-10 minutes until the crust is as crunchy/chewy as you would like
• Remove, let the pizza hang out for about 2 minutes, slice, eat, enjoy.

This pizza was amazing. The crust was just that, crusty with a nice chewy inside. The ingredients worked together perfectly. Definitely will make this again.

It tastes as good as it looks.