With a great deal of tinkering and experimentation, Blondie and I have worked out a pretty damn good home-made pizza, starting with this lovely crust recipe, taken from a recipe for deep-dish Chicago pizza in Cuisine at Home Issue #53 (p.8)

Combine and proof (let sit until foamy)
¾ cup warm water
1 T sugar
1 pkg or 2 ¼ t dry yeast
2 T olive oil

Blondie usually adds a couple of T’s of chopped fresh or dried herbs to this: cilantro, rosemary, oregano, garlic to the yeast mixture. It gives the crust a certain oomph.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine:
2 cups all purpose flour (We use King Arthur bread flour)
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
2 t kosher salt

Add the yeast mixture and knead on low speed for 10 minutes, or until smooth. Form into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning once to cover with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down, roll into a ball again, return to bowl, cover and let rise again for another hour.

This makes enough dough for two 16-inch thin-crust pizzas or 2 9-10 inch deep-crust pizzas made in an iron skillet. (We have one of those patent pizza pans, with tiny holes drilled through. This would also work on a pizza stone.)The trick is to roll out the dough, and pre-bake for about 10 minutes in a 450 degree oven, on the bottom shelf. The other trick is to cover the baked dough with thin slices of mozzarella cheese (the original deep-dish recipe calls for a layer of very thin sliced deli ham) to keep the crust from getting all soggy. When the baked crust is lightly brown, take it out of the oven, and cover it with the insulating layer of cheese. Then, spread out about a cup of good bottled marinara sauce (Newmans’ is excellent!) over the top of each pizza— not to much, it will overflow, or make the crust soggy. Top with all the various toppings that you favor: thin-sliced onions, mushrooms, cooked crumbled sausage, pepperoni, etc. Don’t pile on too much, this will have to cook through, in a hot oven in a very short time. Top with shredded mozzarella, and sprinkles of whatever extra herbs you may like, but with the herbs in the dough, additions are not necessary. Bake again, in the 450 degree oven until cheese is just lightly melted.

(The dough can also be frozen, and thawed again, if you don’t have a need for two pizzas.)