Home Bakers is a baking group started by Priya of Priya’s Versatile Recipes and this is our first baking challenge. For the first challenge, Divya chose a simple homemade pizza. She gave us couple of pizza crust recipes and few pizza recipes with various toppings. I chose Giada De Laurentiis recipe for without tomato sauce. I followed her crust recipe, used coriander chutney instead of tomato sauce and used pepperoni, mushrooms, jalapeno peppers and Italian cheese for the toppings. Coriander chutney gave the pizza a spicy and tangy flavor.
However, I was not happy with my crust.

I followed the crust recipe as given but by pizza dough did not double in size even after an hour. Right then I knew something was wrong. I still went ahead with the preparation and the overall taste was good. I baked the pizza this afternoon for lunch and we loved the pizza. The recipe called for making two 10” crusts but I made one rectangular pizza. Store bought pizza crust would also work here.

Pizza Crust Recipe: Giada deLaurentiis Pizza without Tomato Sauce
Total Time: 1 ¾ hours
Preparation Time: 1 ½ hours
Baking Time: 15 minutes
Serves: 2

Ingredients:

• Pizza Crust recipe here
• 1 ½ tbsp. Coriander Chutney (store bought)
• 35 – 40 Pepperoni Slices
• 3 medium White Mushrooms sliced
• ¾ cup shredded Italian Cheese (as required. We do not like too much cheese and I used a little sparingly )
• 1 Jalapeno Pepper sliced
• 6 tsp. Olive Oil

Preparation:

• I followed the pizza crust recipe as given. Instead of two pizza crusts, I made one rectangular pizza. I sprinkled little beat of sooji instead of cornmeal on a baking sheet.
• Pre-heat the oven to 450F.
• Roll out the dough into a rectangle and transfer it to the baking sheet.
• Sprinkle 4 tsp. of oil on the pizza base and spread the coriander chutney.
• Arrange pepperoni slices and mushroom slices on the on the pizza base. Sprinkle the cheese and arrange jalapeno slices.
• Drizzle on tsp. oil and place the baking sheet on the middle rack. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until crust is crisp, brown on the bottom and the cheese melts. I baked for 15 minutes and I thought I might have brunt the pizza. I was wrong the pizza was pretty good.
• Remove the pizza from the oven, cut it into small pieces and serve hot.
• I used pepperoni, mushrooms and jalapeno peppers toppings but can use any topping one wishes. That is the advantage of a homemade pizza, isn’t it?