What's for Dinner Tonight?

My mother is still a little surprised to hear me say that I love to cook.  I had no interest in learning to cook when I was younger and still at home.  I'm sure she thought I would consume an outrageous amount of Ramen noodles while at college, but once I was off on my own, cooking began to spark my interest.  I called her many times with the question, "Mama, how do you make your...."  I like to try new recipes, although Jesse is a little leery of this.  There was this one time that I experimented with a pasta bake recipe I found.  It called for ground cinnamon in the meat sauce, and lets just say he hasn't let me live that one down yet. :)   Anyway,... several months ago I made a loaf of white bread for the first time, and loved the whole process so much that I bought a big jar of yeast instead of the little packets with intentions of baking all sorts of breads.  Tonight we made homemade pizza and I opened that jar of yeast for the first time! But making the pizza dough reminded me of how much I love making dough.  That seems like a silly statement. But it is so much fun to watch the yeast proof, then throw in some flour and knead away.... smush, smush, smush.... then that little ball of dough grows into this huge poofy mound of potential.  And then you can do this:

The dough recipe I used came from here.  I proofed my yeast in my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl, attached the dough hook, then slowly added the flour and salt with the mixer on low speed.  Once everything started blending together, I turned the speed up to medium-high, letting the dough hook knead a little for me, and drizzled a bit more olive oil to reduce the stickiness of the dough. I took it out of the mixer after a few minutes and kneaded by hand (this probably wasn't necessary, but I just wanted to get my hands into the dough!).  I pulled my pizza stone out of the oven and dusted it with a little cornmeal (technically...Jiffy cornbread mix) and tossed the dough on.  We baked the pizza crust for several minutes until it was a little firm to the touch to avoid uncooked dough.  Then we loaded it up with veggies and popped it back into the oven to finish cooking.

So yummy!