Home-made parmesan pizza crust

As I sat there having pancakes topped with sliced bananas and maple syrup this morning, a little voice whispered in my head: "Make pizza!" and that was it, I was weak and I followed the command.

It's a total mystery to me how my mind works sometimes... 

Of course, having lack of the right ingredients is part of this schizophrenic food-driven problem of mine. Fortunately, because of all the cakes and things that I make, flour is definitely always just an arm's length away. The only things I used for these pizza that I'm somewhat ashamed to admit are the hot dogs. Yes, you heard me, hot dogs (Sometimes, wrapping hot dogs in cheese and tortilla bread and baking them for a few minutes in the oven could save your sanity on a Friday night with two hyper hungry little girls. Thus, I had three leftover jumbo hot dogs)

*sigh* you're judging me... I know it! But you know what, that's okay, because these pizza were delicious!!!

D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S

Make them.

Even if you only have hot dogs. In fact, make them margherita pizza for that matter! Obviously, I was lucky to have frozen a small tub of tomato sauce just days ago, so that helped the situation.

But really! MAKE THEM! It's so fast if you have these essentials on hand. So, if you have a yummy tomato sauce and some shredded cheese sitting in the fridge, here is the recipe for the pizza crust

Perfect Parmesan Pizza Dough, courtesy of Kraft
(makes four 12" crust)

• 5 cups flour, divided
• 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. quick-rise instant yeast (1 1/4 tsp and 1 tsp of sugar if you only have active dry yeast)
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups cold water
• 1/4 cup olive oil 

***If you only have active dry yeast, take 1/4 cup of the water and heat it in a small bowl in the microwave for about 15 seconds, or until 100*F, then mix in the yeast and the sugar. Use that in place of the yeast listed in the instruction.

Mix 4 cups flour, parmesan, yeast and salt in large bowl. Add water and oil; stir until soft dough forms. Knead dough about 5 min. or until smooth and elastic then slowly add remaining flour .

Cut dough into 4 pieces. Spray each piece with cooking spray if you have, I just left them as is. Cover the dough pieces loosely with plastic wrap let stand 15 min. or so.

Once everything is ready, heat the oven to 450*F. Stretch each piece of dough out to fit a 12" pizza pan (or just free style it like I did LOL!) Top with your favorite tomato sauce and toppings and bake for about 18 minutes.

Then, devour. Like we did.

I topped all of them, but only baked two and I froze the rest, well wrapped. For rainy days, they will come in handy... That is, if we can resist them until then ;)