National Cheese Pizza Day: Cheese pizza recipe
September 5, 2007
It’s National Cheese Pizza Day!
In honor of National Cheese Pizza Day we give you — a homemade four-cheese pizza recipe and the perfect reason for making a pizza today.
Not to say that National Cheese Pizza Day is an official holiday. We, at the cottage, are undaunted by this lack of formality in our continuing quest to discover one more way to celebrate each and every day.
The unofficial official proclamation made somewhere by someone that today is National Cheese Pizza Day was all the reason we needed to hang out in the cottage kitchen making a cheese pizza for no other reason than we overheard it is National Cheese Pizza Day.
Following is our homemade four cheese pizza recipe:
Pizza crust:
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (115 degrees)
1 envelope package of yeast
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of sugar
3 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
A stainless steel or ceramic mixing bowl
Sprinkle the yeast from the packet over the lukewarm water. Sprinkle the sugar over the yeast. Let it bubble up for about five minutes. Add the olive oil. Sprinkle in the salt. Stir in half the flour.
When thoroughly mixed, add the remaining flour. When completely mixed together it will be pizza dough — smooth and firm in texture — not sticky or wet.
Knead on a floured board until the dough is very smooth. Make a ball, lightly coat the ball of pizza dough with olive oil and return to metal bowl. Cover the bowl with a towel and allow the pizza dough to rise to double its size. This will take about an hour.
Punch down the pizza dough and place on a floured board. Let set while you prepare the pizza toppings for the pizza.
Four Cheese Pizza topping:
For the sauce, you can use plain tomato sauce, a thin coating of tomato paste or a bit of spaghetti sauce. You will sprinkle dried basil and oregano on the sauce, so use whatever tomato-based sauce you have on hand.
For the cheeses, we used grated mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, romano cheese and crumbled feta cheese.
Once your pizza toppings are assembled, roll out your pizza dough. Sprinkle cornmeal on a pizza pan and place the rolled out pizza dough on the pizza pan. Stretch it out to the edges of the pan. Coat the dough with the sauce, sprinkle the dried basil and oregano on the sauce, add your cheeses. Bake at 425 degrees in the oven. Watch to see when the crust and cheeses turn golden brown. Our pizza takes about 20 minutes, but it depends on where you live and your oven. So just keep an eye on it — you will know when it looks done.
Enjoy! and Happy National Cheese Pizza Day.
