Kat,

I have totally abandoned the old recipe I used to use for pizza dough (it was a modified version of one of my bread recipes) for the one I found last year in Martha Stewart Living. Bianco's Pizza Dough is the best recipe I've ever come across. I make it in a bread machine on manual setting, so the only adjustment I make is I use the dry yeast in the machine and I add a tablespoon or so of olive oil since it won't be rising in a bowl to get that oil flavor. Be sure to use regular flour, not bread flour.

I tip the dough onto the counter when it finishes in the machine and cut this into five portions. Each of these is rolled out (rolling pin) and then I pierce it liberally with a fork. The oven has the pizza stone in it and has been pre-heated to 500. The ones I'm going to freeze I bake for 4 minutes, and sometimes I have to pull it out for a minute and deflate the crust if it does a puff thing like pita bread. Tonight I made 4 extra crusts (they average 10 inches across) and I made one pizza a bit larger for dinner tonight and have a few slices left over for lunch.

My favorite pizza these days is a pesto chicken pizza. No tomato sauce. When I put the dough on the stone then I add the toppings and pop it in the oven for 5 minutes. Toppings are first to pour a little olive oil on and spread it around with my hand, then sprinkle on some garlic powder and a little salt. From there I take some Julienne cut basil and pretty much pave the thing with basil (there are a few gaps so I can see the crust, but I use a lot of basil leaves on this). On top of this I put some disks of chicken breast (I have gotten in the habit of pan sauteing a boneless chicken breast and I cut it into several pieces so it cooks through -- this is handy for so many things, pizza, salad, whatever) and on top of this add mozzarella. This is a recipe I developed after a friend took me to Schlotzky's for their pesto pizza, so if you want an idea of what this tastes like find one of those. I'm really enjoying pizza without the tomato sauce these days.

(A complete aside here: don't you miss the days when Rick Fielding started those great cooking threads? He was such a talented musician, but he also inspired so many Mudcat cooks!)

I scanned this pizza dough recipe and saved it in a document so if you would like I can email the document to you where I pasted it. That recipe has a few smudges because I kept that copy of the magazine in the kitchen for many months. :)

Okay now, Kat, think about this: next time Morgan visits, you could either make this dough and let him make his own pizza, or you could make these in advance and when he visits, pull out a Morgan-sized crust and ask what he wants on his pizza. In the bread machine I set it on turbo and it takes one hour before it finishes and I can shape, roll, and bake it. I'd love to see his expression! When I use the frozen crusts I let them defrost then I put them on a metal pizza pan and they bake at 450 for 3-4 minutes. Sometimes I put it in the oven for a minute before I put the toppings on so it dries out if there was any condensation from defrosting.

SRS