Pizza Dough/Foccacia/Bread Dough

Instead of ordering pizza while in Seattle, Jodi made a homemade pizza dough and we made individual pizzas for dinner one night.  There was a hunk of leftover dough, so we did something else with it another night.  But first, let me share the dough recipe because it's quite honestly one of the best homemade ones I've had.  The original recipe came from Jodi's copy of The Food of Southern Italy by Carlo Middione.

Basic Bread Dough For Making Homemade Italian-Style Bread, Pizza, and Focaccia (page 47 of The Food of Southern Italy)

2/3 cup warm water, not over 100F
1 1/2 tsp yeast, fresh or dry
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups bread flour
3 tbsp olive oil (added to the warm water)

The book has about three pages of directions, which I'm not going to go through.  Check out my bread baking tutorial instead!  The original recipe does say that this can be easily doubled or tripled.

For extra special flavour and a great aroma, Jodi adds garlic powder to the recipe.  This comes out light and airy and crisp, with big air bubbles reminiscent of ciabatta bread. 

Here are the pizzas we made!

Jodi's pizza

My pizza

As I mentioned, the third portion of dough was saved and refrigerated for another use.  So the next night, Jodi made an amazing garlic cheese bread with it.  OMG!  So good!

I'll be keeping this dough recipe handy for future pizza nights in my own house!