Lou and Jo's Second-Favorite Thing

Lou and Uncle He-Man joke that he is Lou's second-favorite thing right after pizza.

Don't tell him, but it's not true. Actually, he's right after pizza after chicken fried steak. Yum.

We kid. We kid.

We do love a good pizza, and the Pioneer Woman gives a great pizza recipe along with two topping variations. Today, we'll talk about the crust. We will then divulge the tantalizing details of the toppings in a future post.

Frankly, we are both exhausted this evening and had our skirts in a twist about the calculus it would take to blog about the entire pizza-making process. We took 97 pictures of pizza, folks. We were excited that night. Obsessive? Yes. Crazy? Maybe. Fatter? Oh, dear. We need new skirts.

Drumroll, please (and no, not a drumstick because we would eat that, too). Here is Ree Drummond's Pizza Crust recipe (p.108).

We started with one-and-a-half cups of warm water. We sprinkled active dry yeast into the water. Are you on the edge of your seat, yet? Good. Us neither. Although...which photo is better?

This one...

...Or this one?

We think the yeast looks particular yeasty in photo two. We're glad you agree.

In a separate bowl we mixed four cups of flour and a little salt. Jo attempted to multi-task. She tried to add a third cup of extra virgin olive oil to the flour mixture while manning the camera as Lou was spot-on with her focus of manning the hand-held mixer. Thankfully, most of the flour remained in the bowl.

Next we added the yeast mixture to the flour mixture.

Here's the fun part. Pour a little olive oil into a large bowl, and place the dough into the bowl. At this point, our dough was a touch crumbly, but with Lou's magic fingers she coaxed the dough into a ball of yeasty beauty. Are we delirious? We think so. Continuing on.

Jo covered the bowl with a moist kitchen towel. Dough grows better in a warm environment, so she placed it on top of the refrigerator. That also kept us from peeking at it too often as it grew over the next two hours.

After its incubation period, we divided the dough in half to make two separate pizza crusts. Mr. Fabuful assisted us as we each spread the crust thin on separate olive-oil-drizzled baking sheets. Somehow that sentence does not seem to be in proper English form, but at this point, we don't have the energy to change it.

So, yeah.

That's it for tonight.

When we're a little more lively, we'll share the rest with you. We promise. Until then...

Happily Full,