The Common Culinarian

No pictures because the dough was quickly used for pizza

• 3/4 cup of all purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 cup of hot (not boiling, not tepid) water
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl. Pour the water into dry ingredients and stir to combine. Add the olive oil and stir again to combine. The dough will be very sticky. Cover and set aside for 5 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a liberally floured surface and knead several times. Spread onto a well oiled 12-inch pizza pan (I used my Misto oil sprayer), using flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to your hands.

Dock (poke holes all over with a fork) the dough and pre-bake in the preheated over for 4-6 minutes, until very lightly browned. To finish, add your choice of toppings and back for 15-20 minutes, until the crust and toppings are done and the cheese is lightly browned.

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How this recipe came about: I know some people are probably pizza dough purists and would only make a dough with yeast. That doesn’t work well for quick meals on a weeknight, especially when you’re scrambling to think of something or face going out to an overpriced, under-tasty restaurant. So, I keep a box or two of that quick pizza crust mix on hand in my pantry. Tonight, however, I ruined this really simple mix. All you had to do was add 1/2 cup of hot water. I added a full cup.

So, due to some quick thinking on my part, I scanned the ingredient list… Flour, fat, leavening, and some other stuff that probably isn’t necessary. I have all of those things, so great! I guessed at the proportions based on the nutritional information:

• There was about 6.5 oz of mix in the box, and I knew most of it was going to be flour…  6.5 oz is approximately 3/4 cup
• A recipe for quick biscuits on my baking powder can called for 3 teaspoons to 2 1/4 cups of four… I wanted my crust to have a little more “lift” than the biscuits, so I used about half the amount of baking powder for less than half the amount of flour
• The amount of fat on the nutritional information was 2.5 g. A tablespoon is something like 14g… But 1/2 teaspoon of oil didn’t seem like enough, so I just used a full teaspoon.
• And, for this small amount of flour, I thought an equally small amount of salt would be good.

Do you sense a theme? That’s what cooking is all about–try and try again until you get it right, and use a little intuition and your resources to come up with your own interpretation of a recipe.