Sara's Pizza Dough and Homemade Pizza Sauce

Until I tried this recipe, I was never a big fan of homemade pizza. This crust changed that for me. I use it every time I make homemade pizza. Enjoy!

Pizza Dough
1 cup warm water
2 T softened butter
1 T yeast
2 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 t salt

Mix water, butter and yeast and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Add sugar salt and flour. Mix and knead for 2 minutes. Roll into a ball and let it rise for 20 minutes. During this time I usually make my pizza sauce (see below) and prepare my toppings. Roll out dough, top with sauce, cheese and any toppings of your choice. Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes, until crust is golden. Our family usually makes several small pizzas (each kid likes to make their own, and I've found that 15 minutes is too long for the smaller pizzas, so I start checking ours at 10 minutes.

When we had 2 children my husband went back to university full-time to get his MBA. During this time the budget was extra tight and I had a whole bunch of tomato sauce in my cupboard that I figured I could be doing more with. I asked around and a friend gave me this recipe for pizza sauce. It is super inexpensive, flavorful and easy to make.

Pizza Sauce

1 can tomato sauce
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. onion powder or minced onion
1/2 tsp. pepper (NO SALT--the tomato sauce is salty enough)

Simply mix all ingredients and spread on your crust. The "recipe" I was given was very vague as to the amounts of each spice. So, add more or less of each, according to your taste. I find that this isn't quite enough to cover all the little pizzas we make with the dough recipe (above), so you could double it and save/freeze the remainder for the next time.