Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

Homemade Deep Dish Pizza

Late yesterday evening, the doorbell rang and there was a package from the boy's grandparents for Valentine's Day!  After bath time, we looked to see what goodies they were given-as you can see between this package and my Mom's visit yesterday with goodies, the boys are loved so very well! AND today in the mail they got musical Valentine's Day cards from Auntie Emma and Uncle Ryan and Auntie Ashley delivered teddy bears from the boy's great grandparents too!  WOW!! We have some serious thank you notes to be writing!!  Thank you to all of you who love our boys day in and day out!  We are truly blessed to have you in our boy's lives.

Wow, what a long day ...  Braydon, Daddy and I spent the afternoon together and Cole had a date day with Grammie, Papa and Auntie - we LOVE that each of the boys gets to have one on one time with each of us parents to get special time that they wouldn't normally have.  

As we closed in on our day, I wanted to make something not too high maintenance, but something that would still be yummy -homemade deep dish pizza!  

First,  I made the dough- this is by FAR my favorite pizza dough recipe!

If you have a bread maker, throw it all in to do the work for you- if not mix and knead by hand and let it rest for about 30 minutes in a dark, covered space to rise.

Here we go ... mix together 1 2/3 c water, 2 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp milk, 4 1/2 c flour, and 2 tsp yeast.  Mix, knead and let rise.  When ready, prepare a floured surface to roll out the dough.

I rolled out the dough leaving it about 1 1/2 inches deep and placed it on my floured pizza stone.

I then topped the dough with some olive oil.

Now is the fun part ... I mimicked a margherita style pizza using what I had on hand.  I used sun dried tomatoes, basil, pepper, garlic powder and red pepper flakes.

I then sliced some of my pepper jack cheese ...

and topped my pizza with it.

I set the oven at 425 degrees and then placed my pizza in to bake for 20 minutes.  

Adjust the timing to your own preference ... I  prefer my crust a bit crispy and the cheese melted to a golden coloring.

Let the cheese cool slightly on the pizza, slice and then serve!