Friday night is pizza night!

This little beauty is one of my favorite kitchen appliances.  My absolutely favorite bread machine recipe is the pizza dough recipe I found at Allrecipes.  Whoever you are Kim, thank you for this one!

Ingredients

• 1 cup flat beer
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

Directions

1. Put beer, butter, sugar, salt, flour, and yeast in a bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Dough setting, and press Start.
2. Remove dough from bread machine when cycle is complete. Roll or press dough to cover a prepared pizza pan. Brush lightly with olive oil. Cover and let stand 15 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
4. Spread sauce and toppings on top of dough. Bake until crust is lightly brown and crispy on the outside, about 24 minutes.

To make your beer flat open it up the night before or in the morning and let it set out, if you forget to as I always do, you can pour the beer into the measuring cup from high up, then do the same when pouring into the bread machine, it's not perfect but it'll make it flater and the recipe seems to come out just as well.

In addition to Kim's ingredients, I also use whatever Italian seasoning I have on hand, usually a combination of basil, rosemary, and oregano, I add about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of each, you can add whatever seasoning you fancy or just leave it out altogether.

Add all the ingredients in the order that your bread machine prefers (sorry for the horrible picture, P Dub I am not).  Make a little dent in the flour to put the yeast into.  Once the machine begins making it into dough make sure to check the consistency to see if it needs more liquid or flour.

This pizza dough is good, it tastes more like focaccia bread to me than pizza dough.  If you're a crust girl like I am than you'll love this, the crust is the best part!

Roll it out into a circle the size of a pizza pan (sorry folks I'm not good with measurements so that's as accurate as I get).  Use lots of flour to keep it from sticking and then transfer it to the pan or stone you want to cook it on.  

After I roll it out, I pierce it with a fork all over, put a little EVOO (love Rachel Ray!) on it and bake my dough for about 7 minutes before putting on any toppings.  I find that it comes out doughy if I don't do this pre-bake step, but that's just me.  After I put on all the toppings I cook it another 17 minutes or until it's done.

I made this Margherita (no sauce, mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil, drizzled in EVOO and sprinkled with salt) pizza a few weeks ago when I was still trying to use up the tomatoes from my garden.  My favorite to make when I don't have an abundance of tomatoes is BBQ Chicken (BBQ sauce for the sauce, cheddar cheese, chicken, and red onions) pizza.  

I haven't picked up a pizza for dinner since finding this recipe (unless we were out of town), it's that good and that easy!  Enjoy!