Fast Food?

One hard thing to get used to here in Nepal is that there is no such thing as fast food. Every thing is cooked from scratch here. I love learning new things and cooking new food, but some times you just want something easy!

We recently bought a deep freezer to help with this problem. So I have been doing my best to fill it up with quick things--still made from scratch, but will be quick to make when they are needed.

Project #1

Frozen Pizza

This turned out super easy. We don't eat pizza a lot because cheese is expensive and we bring our pepperoni from America, but I figured if I'm making some for dinner I should double the recipe and make some to freeze.

Still haven't succeeded in teaching him to "not" eat like a dog, but at least he enjoyed it!

First thing's first

1. Find a cute helper, even is she does sneak pepperoni when you aren't looking.

2. Make your dough.

This is the recipe I used and it is by far my favorite so far for homemade pizza. I doubled the recipe for this.

Pizza Crust

5 cups of flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. salt

1 Tbsp. Yeast

2 Tbsp. Olive Oil ( I only have sunflower oil)

1 3/4 c. water

Knead this all together. The dough will be sticky, but you also don't want it to stick to your hands or the counter, so keep adding flour as needed. I only added 9 cups (remember I doubled), just to make sure I didn't have too much flour, but then ended up using almost 12 cups of flour.

Let it rise in a warm place for 2 hours. Divide into 2 balls if you didn't double the recipe, divide into 4 balls if you did. Let them rest for about 15 minutes.

Roll out dough to the size of your pizza pan or cookie sheet (pizza doesn't really have to be round to taste good.) Now remember, you will be freezing some of these so don't use a pizza pan that's bigger than your freezer!

Bake your crust for about 5 minutes at 425 degrees. Just till the outside is starting to get hard, but not turning any color.

Once it cools completely, top it with your favorite toppings.

Place your pizzas on the pan (or cardboard cut to the right size ) in your freezer for about 3 hours. Once they harden then you will wrap them in Saran wrap and tin foil.

Now it's ready to freeze until you need it in a hurry.

I did this last week, and we ate some for dinner. Everyone loved it.

Even Emily wanted a piece!

So it has been frozen for almost a week now. Today our plans changed and last minute I didn't have anything ready for lunch so we pulled out a pizza. 

I heated the oven to 425 degrees and baked the pizza straight from the freezer without thawing. In 15 minutes it had a beautiful color and was nice and crispy!

We even had some visitors join us!