{The Very Best} Crunchy Granola

Hola!! from the very depths of organization project, get-stuff-done land.

Where, oh where, has this week gone?! It has simply flown by for me. But, I've realized that it makes sense to get some of my heavier projects out of the way while I'm still marginally spry, and we'll finish up school when I'm not-so-spry anymore, so this week, and possibly the next few will be about getting the house in shape for Bebe'--which actually means getting the house in shape for my sanity's sake.

 I haven't blogged any recipes for a while, and it seemed like it was about time. I have a weird relationship with food right now--I think I've had heartburn a bit too much, because most of the time I am not feeling the food. And, if by chance I happen to be ravenously hungry and starving, and then I go to eat and about halfway through my plate I feel like I am going to explode, and it doesn't even sound good anymore. This makes food prep really hard these days. My apologies, dear family of mine.

 So, Granola is right about my speed at this time.

 I have made granola off and on (mostly on) for most of our married life. But, Garrett has always refused to eat it because it wasn't crunchy and chunky enough, and my kids never really liked it too much either. So, I'd make a HUGE x5 batch every 4 - 5 months or so, stick it in the freezer, and it would be my breakfast for however long it lasted.

 Earlier this year we decided to focus really hard as a team on eating and living more healthfully as a whole family. We've always eaten pretty healthfully--but realistically not as a team--just more separately, with some of us doing better than others. As a result I've done my best to find recipes and ways of preparing food that we can ALL be happy with, and enjoy together. I found this recipe as a result of that challenge and have tweaked it as I've made it to suit all of our desires.

I am happy to say that when I am making granola, everyone is happy in this house. And everyone eats it, often shrieking (Not Garrett, to be clear. He doesn't shriek.) and burning their fingers as they pick it from the cookie sheet straight out of the oven. Score!

 {The Very Best} Crunchy Granola

In a saucepan combine:
2/3 cup honey
1/2 cup coconut oil (I'm sure another type would work also-the original recipe is with canola, we just love coconut oil for it's healthful properties and delicious flavor.)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla (or to taste, I usually just dump it straight it, so it's probably a bit more than that when I make it.)
1 tsp. cinnamon (or to taste, I also dump this in straight from the container.)

Bring to a low simmer over medium heat, whisking together. In another bowl combine:
5 cups regular oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup coconut flakes (I like Bob's Red Mill, Unsweetened)
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 cups cashews

Mix the sauce and the oat mixture together and spread on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake at 275-300 degrees for approximately 40 minutes,  CHECKING and STIRRING EVERY 10.

When golden brown and just barely starting to smell toasted, remove from oven.

Let cool and add:
2 cups dries fruit of your choice, if desired.

Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

 Recipe Notes:

I have found this recipe to be EXTREMELY forgiving. Seriously, about every four times I make it I screw it up and do 2/3 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup honey by accident, and it still turns out crispy and clumpy, as my husband would tell you granola should be. I'm aware that brown sugar is probably not the most healthful sweetener, but I am deathly afraid (ok, maybe not quite that afraid!) of losing the crunchy and clumpy, so I haven't experimented with other sweeteners, because I'm pretty sure it's the combination of those two that gives it the clumps--I've made granola with maple syrup and honey mixture for years, and NEVER gotten crunchy clumps. It's only 1/3 of a cup of brown sugar to a total volume of dry goods of 10 cups, so I figure it's really not that much. Provided of course that I don't screw it up and do 2/3 cup by accident instead. :-)

You could definitely bake this at a higher temperature and for a shorter period of time if you wanted it done sooner. For myself, I prefer my granola more dehydrated at a lower temp than baked at a higher--it gives me more room for error if I forget to set my timer... which I usually do at least once. As I've baked and experimented with this recipe, I've lowered the original temp from 350 down to 275... and I've been MUCH happier with how it's turned out. It takes longer, but it doesn't burn when I do forget about it for a while.

I don't usually add the dried fruit because we eat it over Greek yogurt with a mix of berries a lot, and no matter how many times you do the math and add up your carbohydrates and divide by portion sizes, the carbohydrate count for granola/cereal is really difficult, and basically comes down to trial and error. Dried fruit makes it even more difficult because every single raisin or whatever counts towards your carbs. Healthcare professional will tell you I'm crazy for that, but they're wrong.  In diabetes and carb-counting Land, 2 + 2 doesn't always equal 4-most of the time it ends up equaling about 56. and occasionally -15. But, I keep thinking that dried cherries and blueberries would be amazing. If I could manage to get to that section at the end of Costco without already hitting the ceiling on my budget, I might actually manage to get some one of these days.

It will still be wet-ish still when it comes out of the oven... go by the color of it (golden brown) and the slight toasty smell, not the feel. I usually let mine sit out over night if I make it in the evening, or until the evening if I make it in the morning. Added bonus to this little procedure is that the recipe makes just slightly more than fits in my storage container. By the time everyone in our family has walked by a few times and grabbed handfuls, it fits perfectly. :-)

You can, of course, use whatever nuts/seed combinations you like. This blend just happens to be what my family loves. Also, I'd say that this starts out plenty gooey enough, so you have enough syrup to add another cup of dry goods if you want additional nuts, or more oats or flaxseed, which I would probably add if it wasn't 500 miles downstairs in my secondary freezer. If you do use cashews, make sure to get the broken ones and not the whole ones--they are way cheaper.

  ENJOY! 

Breakfast is a sacred time at our house, every day. We all hold it near and dear, and generally speaking do our very best to endure and not resent the things that occasionally screw it up. Hugs and snuggles and quiet voices and books and peace. Simple, easily prepped food because I don't like making dishes or a mess that early in the morning, or fussing over a meal.

Lemon Cheese Brioche

***Edited with additional instructions per requests from readers on 1.31.2012. Thank you!

Before we proceed, go check out my guest post at The Chatty Housewife's! She's featuring my favorite five today.

 I occasionally joke that this is the recipe my husband married me for. It's pretty good.

<<< So, first off, let me apologize for the photography in this post. Someday, I may have to post it again with good photography, ha. The photography IN NO WAY does justice to this treat. I've been taking pictures since last August to share this recipe, and the lighting is always wrong, the shadows are always wrong, and I always forget to take pictures of important things when I do it, like, for example, a sliced piece of this amazing pastry. However, I've promised this recipe to approximately 8 different people now, and I don't have the ingredients or the time to whip up another one real fast, so the blog post is going up, poor photography or not. You'll note that some of the photos are from my Wenatchee kitchen at like 10pm, ha, and some are from this kitchen--which is wreaking havoc on my food photography altogether, thanks to shadows, and florescent lights.>>>

I've actually made some variation of this recipe since I was about 12 years old or so... it's gone through various mutations over time, with different bread recipes, and variations on the filling. I happen to think that it's perfect just the way it is now. The original recipe had frosting on it, and a different sweet bread... I think it's too sweet with frosting, although you could certainly add it if you liked. And this Brioche recipe is amazing. Most of the time Brioche is made with copious amounts of butter, but this is a butter-free recipe that manages to be light and flaky and rich, and really shines with the creamy lemony goodness inside. If you had lemon haters, I really do think you could make it without lemon. Maybe vanilla instead? We LOVE lemon here, so that probably won't ever happen at our house, but I'd be interested to hear if someone else tries it without lemon.

 This is where I originally got the Brioche recipe from. 

Side note: If you make this Brioche (without the lemon cheese filling, to be clear) in a loaf pan just like a loaf of bread, and then use this recipe for French Toast, your family will love you forever and beg you for this recipe OFTEN. Trust me when I say you should just go ahead and double it. You can also roll it out and put cinnamon and sugar on it, and then roll it into a loaf, but honestly it's so good without that I never bother. This also proves that I watch Diner's, Drive-in's and Dives a bit too much. It's just that those are my most favorite types of restaurants. :-)

Without further ado, here's my version of the brioche, and my procedure for getting this particular amazing product out of it:

(All total I'd say this takes about 2.5 casual hours to make--as each bit of action gets done fairly quickly the time is mostly spent waiting for it to rise.)

Lemon Cheese Brioche

BRIOCHE:
1 TBSP Active Dry Yeast
1.5 cups warm milk
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 TBSP
2 TBSP Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Egg Yolks
4.5 to 5 cups AP Flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 Egg White

Dissolve yeast in warm milk with 1 TBSP sugar (from the 1/2 cup) and olive oil. Set aside 10 Minutes.

Whisk in egg yolks, 1 cup flour, the rest of the 1/2 cup sugar and salt. Let rise for one hour.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING:
Meanwhile beat together:
1 8oz. package cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar (granulated works just fine too.)
1/4 cup lemon juice

(Normally I am a fresh lemon only girl. However, I happen to think that the more mild lemon flavor of the bottled lemon juice suits this recipe a little better than fresh. If you really wanted to go nuts though, you can definitely use fresh lemon, and zest too. Sometimes when I'm craving over the top lemon flavor, I'll do that as well.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

After your Brioche batter has risen for one hour, add the remaining flour and knead until flour is worked in, and it's not sticky anymore. Let rest a few minutes, and then roll out into a rectangle on a floured surface. I usually roll it out to slightly bigger than the cookie sheet it's going to end up on--maybe about 1.3 of an inch thick all around? Spread the cream cheese mixture in the center of the rectangle, long ways, as seen in the photo, with plenty of room for your braids to wrap completely over it.

Using your knife, cut strips into the sides of the rectangle, towards the cream cheese. (not quite too it, however, because you don't want too much cream cheese to leak out while baking.) Fold the strips up, alternating sides. It's generally best to start on opposite ends and work towards the middle.

Carefully (I use a spatula and the full length of my (scrubbed) arm.) Lift the Lemon Cheese Brioche onto a greased cookie sheet. Don't stress it too much. Just get it on there, best you can, any falling apart is easily adjusted once it's on the cookie sheet. I usually stretch it out as big and wide as possible on the cookie sheet, so I have as much of it as possible when it is baked. :-)

Mix together your remaining 1 TBSP of sugar and 1 egg white. Brush the cheese bread with this mixture, generously. It's going to sparkle and shine when it comes out of the oven.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 18 minutes. I usually start checking it at 15 and tent it with tin foil if need be to keep it from getting too brown. Do be careful to not under-bake it though, unless you like slightly under-baked bread dough. :-)

 I usually slice it width and length-wise so the pieces are a little bit easier to wrangle into your mouth. It's delicious both warm and cold, and actually makes ahead and freezes very well, since the cream cheese is baked. It is beautiful whole, as well. If I wasn't always so desperate to eat it, It'd hurt me a little to cut into it. Haha.

 Enjoy! I hope your family loves it as much as mine! I find it's best to make it only when company is coming over, or I can take it somewhere to share, because otherwise we will eat the whole thing in short order. :-)

Scraping the baking sheet and eating it all is HIGHLY recommended. :-)

Moving Wrap-Up. Yay.

So. We've been in our house for two weeks now, I think. Something like that. Here are just a few pics of the process, for memory's sake.

I am COMPLETELY and UTTERLY spoiled by having movers. I will not deny it. However, if I ever (God Forbid) have to move myself again, there is one lesson I have learned that I will be taking with me forever.

They have no emotional attachment to the stuff they're packing - they just pack. 

They don't go all momma-gaga over baby pictures (thankfully, that would be weird.), have something jog their memory so they have to go dig in three other closets to find something else that was sitting around at the same time so it can be packed and unpacked together, or get distracted by anything personal. Those are the things that take forever. It's amazing how quickly you can pack a closet if you just pull-out-item, wrap-item, put-item-in-box with great speed and diligence. They packed our whole house in about 6 hours. Granted, it isn't a huge house, but still. They do wrap really weird things like metal cans from the grocery store. I could do without that, for sure. Then, the next day they loaded the truck.

There are weird things about having movers too. Like the fact that they see every facet of your life in a really short period. They've got their fingers in everything from your underwear drawer to your medicine closet, and your bookcase. 

It's always so important to treat people kindly and with respect. It's even more important when they know everything about you by the time your business is concluded. I felt really bad because I didn't have any snacks, water or whatever else food-wise in this house. I should have made it a point to get some before the moving process started. More on that later.

 

 The moving truck, parked in front of our home. So thankful for wide, easy streets!

 My last Arty-Farty project in our East Wenatchee home. It has the perfect spot here in our Tacoma home. There are a few things about it that drive me bananas. I have forbidden myself from talking about them, because it's annoying when people feel compelled right away to point out everything wrong with something cool they did. The errors are part of the homemade charm, right? Yeah. Right. We'll see how long I can live with it before those things get fixed. Somehow.

 There are some things that the movers cannot/will not move. Aerosol cans, open containers, anything flammable, fertilizer, house plants, etc. So, that stuff all got piled into Rovey. I ended up with three really cool movers who'd been doing this for a long time, and were really good to me. So, since it was just an overnight trip for them, they actually packed a lot of stuff they didn't have to. But, I still ended up with the makings for a pretty awesome bomb in the back of my Rover on the way back over the Cascades. It would not be a good time to be one of those people that must smoke while driving, haha.

 And, bright and early Friday morning, at the new house. With my inventory checklist sheet, phone, pen, tape measure and comfortable shoes. Each box/item has a number sticker put on it, and then as they bring things out of the truck they yell the number and I would check it off the list. Then, there's other sheets I signed when they're packing up the house that mark what each number is, so that it makes it easy to find in the new house if a number gets missed.

 Wrapped stairs and padding throughout.

 A skinny street this time. So, on the food/water for the movers. I didn't have any in Wenatchee, but I managed to get to the grocery store first thing in the morning, with the intention of stocking up our fridge with groceries for the weekend so we could unpack the house and still have food to eat without feeling compelled to go out constantly. Because, quite frankly, restaurants aren't really appealing at this point in a move anymore. As the day rolled on I ended up feeling like the Lord had a hand in this because it worked out perfectly. You see, usually the movers have to pack up their truck whenever they want to take a lunch, and go get lunch. They can't bring multiple vehicles to a job-site. But, our street was so narrow and turns so tight that they didn't want to have to navigate it more than once. I was running on adrenaline, so I wasn't too hungry, but around 1pm I noticed that they were doing their best, but seriously lagging. I asked the lead guy if it would be okay to make sandwiches for them all, and he was so thankful and thrilled. So, I did. At this point I was just thinking about it as "a cup of water in Jesus' name" type of thing. Not only do they know everything about me at this point, they know that I'm a Christian, and I wanted them to walk away with a good impression of me, as a follower of Christ.

I would have been thrilled if that outcome was the only good thing that came out of it, but there ended up being quite a bit of blessing in it for me too. Because it was the same three guys who'd packed our house up they know how I had my kitchen, the kids bedrooms, everything set up. So, they unpacked about half of our boxes (which is part of our moving package and I'd asked them to do) but instead of setting stuff on the nearest available surface (including the floor) or just turning boxes full of unbreakable stuff upside down on the floor, they unpacked everything neatly, and put a lot of stuff away. My kitchen was about 1/3 of the way put away, coat/linen closets had a good start, and best of all the girls bedroom toys were all dumped into their toy bins, so I had very little to do in there. So, for just being polite and thankful for them, and for about $15 additional in lunch supplies, I ended up with just enough stuff put away that I didn't feel overwhelmed and completely insane at the end of the day. HUGE blessing.

The lesson? Always give that cup of water in Jesus' name. The motive should NEVER be to get something tangible back for it, or to realize some gain because of it. The bottom line though? There is great blessing in giving. Sometimes it's just the joy of being a witness for Christ, but sometimes it can be a tangible thing too. I'd like to think that the movers walked away saying it was a good day too.  And, I heard enough stories about bad days, I'll be keeping that in mind for future reference. I don't ever want to be the cause of a "bad day" for someone in a service industry.

 Even with as smooth as it all went, any moving day constitutes an emergency chocolate sort of day. I like good dark chocolate chips best as my emergency chocolate. Because one chip (ok, maybe two) is one bite, and it's a lot less calories than the giant bite I'd take out of a chocolate bar. Also, it ends up cheaper too.

 The many things you can do with tootsie rolls. This would be after the kids came home. They're still sitting there, two weeks later. I just can't get rid of these delightful little piles of candy poop.

 Their fort they made with leftover box pieces. The sign on the top of it read "Kep Aut!" Haha.  We've also had a few funny observations lately:

Brie: Mom, what is the matter with this city? They water their parks WAY TOO MUCH!

Keira, loading groceries at Winco, out of breath and flustered (we only had fancy bag-groceries-for-you grocery stores in Wenatchee): What sort of HORRIBLE grocery store is this, anyway?!

Brie, talking about the weather: It's a perfect day, it really is! Other than the gray skies, the fog, and all this rain and wind, it's a perfect day.

And, are my children the only children in the world who refer to going to the bathroom as giving dinner (or a drink) to the toilet? For some reason I have a feeling they might be. Very disturbing. I realize I might lose readers because of this little paragraph. Sorry about that.

 The stairs are well loved by these two. Did you know Darth Vader loves flying down stairs on cardboard? Who woulda thought?

 We got an amazing box of fun food from Italy for a housewarming gift from these ones with some help from these ones. Among all the awesome stuff in that box was a container of Spaghetti made with Squid Ink, and super fresh Extra Virgin Olive Oil. So we had squid ink spaghetti with seared scallops in a olive-oil-butter-wine-garlic sauce... (what do you call that kind of sauce?!) so, SO good! Complete with fresh bread dredged in olive oil, Wow. Best part? Both of the kids liked it too! Thanks so much for the awesome package!! We have had so much fun trying all of the amazing food in that box!

 So, at our old house we had a bar where the kids would sit while I was cooking/cleaning etc. And, they'd talk to me, or draw or play with whatever while I was working. This house doesn't have a bar. Unfortunately. Because my babies still feel they must be with me while I'm cooking, etc., (not complaining about that, to be clear.) and so instead they pile up on the island. This kitchen is possibly the smallest and most awkward kitchen I've ever had. It's a close second, if not a first. It was one of those things though, where I walked through the house, and it was perfect in almost every way, except for that. So, I knew it was the right house for us, and apparently the Lord isn't done working with me in the kitchen category. Garrett keeps getting promotions, and my kitchens keep getting smaller. It's so weird, I can't really be too bent out of shape about it. And, there are a lot of things I really like about this house, and we've managed to put it together so it works for us. It's just a bit of a head scratcher for me at this point.

 One thing I LOVE about this house is the massive amounts of natural lights... that window in this stair sliding picture below?! It's huge!! And, there's skylights through out, and windows EVERYWHERE. Since I'm a HUGE natural light junkie--like I actually feel I might whither and die without a lot of natural light--it has been perfect, especially with all these gray days--definitely a huge blessing.

The only weird thing about that window is that it looks in to the landing outside our bedroom door. And, I have a bad habit of not having my clothes pulled completely on while I'm leaving my room. So, that has nipped that bad habit in the bud, haha! For the most part. Yeah.  (Hey, usually I'm in a big hurry. And I have people yelling at me things like, MOM!! Where's my heart socks?! MOM!! I can't find my raincoat!!! Hey! Do you know where the rover key is?! and other things like that.)

So, anyway. I think we're pretty much moved in. I'm at the point where all the rooms are pretty much put together, and we've found homes for most things. I have about 15 more pictures to hang... I'm so tired of hanging pictures. Pretty much every picture/painting/clock we've ever had fits perfectly on the walls in this house. I have a few more pieces of furniture to move back against the walls, and stuff like that. I'm at the point though, where I'm so zombied out by all of it that instead of just digging in and doing it so I can move on, I'm wandering around the house all day thinking about the things that I need to do. I'm irritating myself. Plus, we've been doing a lot of school lately.

So yeah. I'm going to go wander around some more and think about what I should be doing.

Peace out.

P.S. After hitting post I just realized that this blog post includes moving madness, awesome food, crazy kid stuff, poop references, star wars references, and scriptural ponderings. Wow. Welcome to my world.

My life is awesome. Have I mentioned that? Feeling really grateful for it all today.

Signing off, for the second time.

Pizza Pie done Sanitarium Style

It may come as a shock to my valued readers, but we are an opinionated lot here at The Happy Sanitarium. And, one thing that we're pretty opinionated about is pizza. To be clear, we'll never refuse pizza prepared on anyone else's turf, and we'll most likely enjoy it. But--these are the rules for pizza pie when assembled in our Sanitarium.

Rule #1. We're New York Style Pizza people. Thin crust, but thick/crispy enough that you can hold it straight after a few minutes off the pan.

Rule #2: No funny toppings please. If I want alfredo, I'll make alfredo. If I want barbeque, I'll make barbeque. If I want Thai food, I'll make Thai food. These are not pizza toppings. It's not that they don't taste good in pizza form, it's just that that isn't what goes on pizza when we want pizza.

Rule#3: NO FORKS. There's something the matter with pizza that has to be eaten with a fork. That ain't any kind of right.

Rule#4: The bread/sauce/topping ratio has to be carefully in balance. If it's off, you end up with a pizza that breaks under the weight of the topping, or the topping slides off the pizza, or GOD FORBID, you have too much crust, or not enough.

I have spent 11 years assembling homemade pizzas here in this Sanitarium, and I shudder when I think of my first pizza creations. Bread too thick and pliable, sauce to thick, wrong cheeses, you name it, I have done it wrong. I have spent a lot of time perfecting my pizza over the years, and now I announce with pleasure that homemade pizza is met with a cheer that is equal to the announcement that we're going out to pizza. That makes a momma feel good.

To be clear, the pizza we're talking here is American home kitchen pizza, not gourmet fresh ingredients Naples, Italy Pizza. You can bet someday I'll be eating that pizza.

Usually I get a 5 pound bag of mozzerella and divide it into 6 bags quart size ziplocs and put it in the freezer. This is the perfect amount of mozzerella for a 15 inch pie.

I usually get my pepperoni from the butcher--he slices it thin for me, but when I shot this post, all I had was Kroger brand pepperoni. In theory, the pepperoni should be fatty enough that it pulls apart even when it's frozen. One pound of pepperoni usually does 4 pizzas. If you have big pepperoni pieces you have to cut them down to a bite size, otherwise they will slap your chin when you take a bite, and drag the whole pepperoni off the piece. That is annoying.

One of the handiest tricks I've figured out for making pizza is that if you take the mozzerella and pepperoni out of the freezer and just set it next to the stove FIRST thing, it will be just melted enough to break down into grated form again when it's time to dress the pizza. So, the first thing I do is pull the mozzerella and the pepperoni out of the freezer, and set it by the stove.
Then, I make the:

Pizza Crust
1 TBSP Yeast
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp kosher salt (I usually just do a big pinch)
1 cup tap warmed water
2 1/4-1/2 cups AP flour

Mix all together, knead until elastic. I usually knead it in my bowl, because I hate scraping flour and dough off my counter. This dough doesn't need to raise. In theory I should be organized to be able to make pizza dough earlier in the day so in can raise, and set and whatever. Reality, however, is a whole different matter. I've never managed that, so this is the pizza dough recipe for me.
This part is very important, and not to be skipped. Let set 10 minutes or so after you knead it--usually that's how long it takes an oven to preheat, so that's a handy coincidence. Otherwise it won't be relaxed enough to stretch over your pizza board, and you'll be irritated.


Meanwhile, put your oven rack on the very bottom shelf. The very bottom, right next to the bottom burner. This step is very important.



(Ya like how I cleaned my oven for this blog post? Actually, I did clean it. Then I baked something before I shot the pics, and it made a mess. That happened three times, and finally this time I decided to shoot the pictures anyway, because I needed food posts, and I've been trying to do this post since April. So, no clean oven pictures for you!)

While your dough is resting, preheat your oven to 455 degrees.

Fact: I am not superstitious. But, the first time I made pizza that I was thrilled with I had set my oven temp at 455 degrees instead of 450 by accident. From then on out I have set it at 455 degrees. Again, I am not superstitious. I am a creature of reliable habit. Or something. But, it probably wouldn't work if I set it at 450 degrees. No sense risking bad pizza over a 5 degree difference, regardless of its basis in paranoia. Just sayin'.

Another fact: I also scrubbed the screen of my oven for you. It looks like it's covered in grease because the stupid film oven's come covered in when they're new left a residue, and I can't get it off, regardless of trying for 3.5 years. I swear my house is clean. Ish.

So, once your dough is rested, oil your stone and spread the dough out on it.

like so...

Bake your pizza crust for 10 minutes. (WARNING: I use a Pizza Stone. If you have a pizza pan that is made from a different material, you might want to keep a close eye on it to make sure 10 minutes is not too long!) While it's baking get your sauce ready. I buy canned plain tomato sauce--a 15 oz. can does 2 pizzas with the perfect amount of sauce. So, I mix in garlic, italian seasoning, salt and pepper to taste, and then freeze half of the sauce, and heat up the other half for this pizza.

Yum.

After your crust has been in the oven for 10 minutes, pull it out and put your toppings on it. This is the perfect amount of sauce. There should never be so much sauce on a pizza that the topping is sliding off and slapping your chin every time you take a bite. Chin slapping pizza is irritating.

For this pizza I did pepperoni for the kids, and pepperoni, bacon, red peppers and mushrooms for us. See how my cheese was just unfrozen enough to spread over the pizza here? Yes, setting it by the oven at the beginning of the process works great. You might have to whack it on the counter a few times, but it works very well.

Put your pie back in the oven on the bottom rack again for 8-10 minutes, depending on how golden you want it.

This is literally within a minute of pulling it out of the oven. So, it will only get stiffer after a bit more time out of the oven. We never have to use forks with this recipe.

We're at the point now where we don't get any leftovers for cold pizza breakfast the next day. Sad. However, by next year I'm betting that we'll need two pizzas for dinner, but we'll have a lot of breakfast pizza left over. That will be wonderful.

This pizza recipe is just as fast as ordering pizza to your door, and I daresay it is better. Also, by the time you figure dealing with the pizza box and all that stuff, there aren't that many dishes for homemade pizza, so I think all-in-all its a worthy (and cheaper!) alternative.

PS--one of our favorite stay-up--late snacks is this pizza crust recipe spread on the stone and then sprinkled with granulated garlic, italian seasoning, a few handfuls of mozzerella and a few handfuls of parmesan. Then bake for 15 minutes at 455 degrees on the bottom rack, or until crispy and golden on top, and when you pull it out slice it into sticks, and dip into ranch dressing or pizza sauce. People who have to go to work at 4 am the next morning have gotten out of bed for this snack. It's that good.

What are your family's pizza rules?! I'd love to know. I hope we're not the only ones who are crazy-opinionated about pizza!