Best Homemade Pizza Crust Recipe EVER!

I found this recipe on recipezaar.com, and it is fabulous! I don't know if we'll order pizza in again. It makes a dough that is crusty on the outside and bottom and soft on the inside. I followed the recipe exactly (I did the non-bread machine version). It was really easy.

When it was time to bake, I sprayed my Pampered Chef pizza stone with cooking spray. Then I just pulled the dough out into a circle while going around it and patted it out to the edge of the stone (making a little raised area around the edges for the crust). I think it would be too sticky to roll. Then we topped it with Four Cheese Pizza sauce, mozzarella, lite pork sausage, turkey pepperoni, and onions. Oh, I also sprinkled garlic powder around the crust, too. It bakes a LARGE, thick crust pizza that covers that whole large pizza stone.

I made two batches the first time I made this, because I didn't realize how MUCH it made. I just kept the other batch covered in the refrigerator a couple of days and then baked another pizza. It was just as great.

Click here for the recipe:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Basic-Pizza-Dough-26181

Angel Biscuits

These are an old time family recipe. I can remember watching my great-grandmother in Northern Louisiana making these, and she would tell me how to do them. She lived until she was 101 (passed away in 2000) and always had "little ditties" for us when we would come visit. She had 39 great-grandchildren. I wonder if she ever showed them how to make Angel Biscuits? Anyway, my mother-in-law makes these, too. I have never made them that people did not rave over them. They are pretty easy and ALWAYS a hit! You just have to allow some extra time. You can make the dough a day ahead and store in the refridgerator then roll them out and bake them the next day which saves time.

Ingredients

5 cups of flour

1/2 cup of sugar

1 tsp. of baking powder

1 tsp. of baking soda

1 tsp. of salt

3/4 cups of shortening (tip: buy the sticks of shortening ... they are pre-measured and much neater and faster to work with)

2 cups of buttermilk

1 and 1/3 Tbsp of yeast

1/2 cup of warm water

pinch of sugar

Combine the yeast, warm water and a dash of sugar in a glass bowl. The sugar will proof the yeast and make sure it is still good. If the yeast mixture starts expanding then it is good ... the yeast is eating the sugar and is still alive. Set this aside.

In a large bowl, add the dry ingredients. Cut in the shortening to the dryin ingredients until the shorting is blended in. Use a pastry cutter/blender to do this or you can use two knives to cut it in ... but the paster cutter is well worth the small amount of money they cost. Wal-mart or Target will have them.

In a large bowl (or I use a very tall glass) add the two cups of buttermilk. To the buttermilk, add the yeast.

Make a well in the bottom of the dry ingredients (just move the flour mixture to the edge of the bowl until you can see the bottom of the bowl in the middle). Add a little bit of the buttermilk/yeast mixture to the well in the flour mixture. Stir with a fork until well blended. Then add a little more buttermilk/yeast and blend that with the fork. Keep doing that until all of the buttermilk/yeast mixture is mixed in with the flour mixutre. The dough will be sticky.

You can now put plastic over the bowl with the dough and store it in the refridgerator over night. The dough is usually easier to work with if it has been refrigerated for and hour or so ... but you don't HAVE to do the refrigeration step.

When you are ready to roll out your biscuits (which are really more like bread than biscuits), heat the oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle about 1/2 cup of flour on a CLEAN kitchen counter (one that has been santized and then cleaned with clear water and dried). Turn the dough out onto the floured counter. Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough that is on the floured counter and knead the dough a little. Take a floured rolling pin and roll out the dough to about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Use a floured glass or a biscuit cutter to cut out your biscuits. Remove those cut out biscuits and put them on a cookie sheet that has a layer of parchment paper on it. Then knead the remainder of the dough ... adding flour if it starts sticking to things but try not to add too much flour or they will be tough.

Once you get all of the biscuits cut out and put on the cookie sheet, I sometimes melt some butter and brush over the top of the biscuits and let the biscuits rise a little ... maybe 20 or 30 minutes (but you don't have to do either of those steps).

Put them in the oven for about 15 minutes until they are golden brown on top. Serve warm with butter, honey and/or jelly. DELICIOUS!

Double Quick, Super Easy Dinner Rolls

This is basically what I think some call a spoon roll recipe. I could be wrong, and I don't even remember where I found this recipe. It is really good and SO easy. People are so impressed when you serve HOMEMADE bread, but this is such an easy recipe. Most bread recipes that you have to knead I end up making like a brick. You don't have to knead these, so I'm safe there. :o) Start making them an hour or so before you want to serve them.

Ingredients

2 1/4 C. of all purpose flour (split into 1 and 1/4 cups and then save the other 1 cup for later in the recipe)
3 T. of sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 T. of quick active dry yeast
1 C. of very warm water
2 T. shortening
1 egg

Mix 1 and 1/2 cups of flour with sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add warm water and shortening and mix until the shortening is mostly melted. Add egg to the mixture and mix until smooth. Stir in remaining flour until smooth. Scrape the batter from the side of the blow. Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes or until doubled in size. Spray 12 regular sized muffin cups with cooking spray. Be sure to get not only the inside of the muffin cups, but the top of the tin, too (these rise pretty high). Stir down the batter by beating about 25 strokes. Spoon into muffin cups. Let rise for 20 or 30 minutes or until batter rounds over the tops of the cups. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake rolls for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Your guests or family will be so impressed with fresh, homemade rolls that taste like you spent half the day working on them! A yummy crowd pleaser!

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

Do you ever have bananas that end up looking like this to the left? Don't throw them away, make them into something beautiful and yummy, like this loaf of bread. You can even freeze them until you are ready to make some bread. I wish you could smell how WONDERFUL my house smells right now.

My kids love bananas, so they rarely stick around long enough to get to this state, but this bunch did. I have a GREAT recipe for Whole Wheat Banana Bread that I got from the Recipe Zaar website. A funny thing about this recipe is that I've been making this since last summer when I found it. When I looked today on the page to see where it came from, I noticed that the recipe was submitted by Kelly Vaughn. I have a friend named Kelly Vaughn. I don't know if this is the same Kelly, but it would certainly show what a small world we live in if it was! Is this you, Kelly? Anyway, here is the yummy recipe the way I make it. Of course, I've done my own thing to it! :o)

Ingredients

1/2 cup of butter melted (one stick)
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
3 medium extra ripe bananas (about 1 to 2 cups mashed)
1 tsp. of vanilla (I forgot to put this in my original post!)
1 cup of all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. of salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1/3 cup of hot water
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Put the melted butter, sugar, bananas, vanilla and eggs in a blender. Blend until smooth. In a separate bowl, stir together the flours, salt and baking soda with a wire whisk. Pour the banana mixture into the flour mixture and mix until moistened. Add the hot water and stir. Stir in chopped nuts if you are using them. Spray a loaf pan well with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake it in the 325 degree oven for and hour and 10 minutes. If the top starts getting too brown before the middle is done, cover it with foil.

Here's another tip if you have and old gas oven like I do (I love cooking on the stove top with gas and won't do it any other way ... don't like cooking in a gas oven). I have to really watch my oven or it gets too hot. I suggest everyone, whether they have a gas or electric oven, get an oven thermometer. I noticed that the top and sides were getting extra brown but when I stuck a knife in the middle, it was still batter-y. So, I just turned the oven off with 24 minutes to go and put the loaf back in. By the time the timer went off, it was done in the middle and not over cooked on the outside. That is just a little trick for my oven ... don't know about yours, but if you often burn stuff, you might try that ... and ALWAYS set the timer for 5 minutes earlier than a recipe says it will take to be done. I've saved many a dish by doing this.