homemade pizza!

i am about to admit something to you... i, like every new yorker am a pizza snob... shocking i know... ha ha... trouble is i don't live in new york anymore... here in the southern most part of new jersey it's very hard to find a good NY style pizza, or bagels for that matter (but that's another story)... and i would starve before i order dominos or pizza hut... but luckily for me there are a few pizza places down here that are owned by former new yorkers... so whoo hoo for that...

but since we don't like to order out a lot, we probably make homemade pizza at least once every 2 weeks... and why not... it's simple, doesn't take a whole lot of time to prepare, it's delicious, and you can jazz it up just about any way you want... we always end up making 2 pies, one for jack, who's a plain cheese man, and one for the grown-ups... usually covered in veggies and maybe even some goat cheese... you know, the kind of pizza a 4 year old would gag at...

we usually use a pizza dough recipe from a better homes and gardens cookbook... but this time i went with a recipe from "smitten kitchen"... and i was very satisfied with the results... not to mention my dad bought me this "pizza stone"... i put that in quotes because it is in fact a piece of tile... you see the big guy is an avid cook, he loooooves the culinary arts... so he read somewhere that a ordinary ol' tile you can purchase at any ol' hardware store is just as good, and even better then a pizza stone... and so far so good... so thanks pops!!

now that the dough was ready, it was time to decorate it... i used some of my homemade marinara (no canned stuff here!), some spinach that was sauteed with garlic and oil, some very ripe jersey tomatoes (hurray for the farmers market!), and some fresh mozzarella... damn it was looking fine... then i popped that beauty in the oven and baked it to crispy bubbly perfection...

it was delicious...

happy baking everyone!