homemade pizza: creamy chicken-mushroom, sweet barbecue-mushroom and tangy zucchini-olive

I come home and little sis says to me, "We never made pizza," a little accusingly.

I blink. "We were going to make pizza?"

"Yes," she said. "Over winter vacation, but we never did." It's summer.

"Oh," I said. "What kind?"

"Mushroom."

Her brain seems to work like this. You ask her, "What movies have we seen lately?" and she tells you that a month ago we saw this action flick called [title] at [movie theatre location] with [friend and/or family member]. We went to dinner at [restaurant] first. She got the [meal]. You got the [other meal] and didn't like it. [Friend or family member] threw popcorn during emotionally stressful parts of the movie.

So we made mushroom pizza.

Little sis thought it needed a bit more of the tomato sauce, so I recommend you spoon on a little more. Otherwise, it was quite tasty. The crust was great, and you can't go wrong with cheese, really. A few nights later, I made a barbecue-mushroom and a zucchini-olive pizza for my parents and visiting grandparents, and those went over quite well also.

Pizza Dough (make the dough the night before)
from Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for More Food (food x mixing + heat = baking)"
1 1/4 C water
1 Tb salt
1 tsp sugar
4 C all purpose flour
1 pkg instant yeast
(AB also suggests you dissolve a chewable vitamin C tablet in the water, but I didn't have one. The dough still turned out great nonetheless. I'm not sure of the purpose of the tablet; any ideas, guys?)

Warm the water until it feels about neutral on your wrist. If you get it too hot (over 110 or so) it will kill the yeast, but it needs to be warm enough to wake it up. Think about body temperature.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, mix the warm water, salt, sugar, yeast, and 3 C of the flour.  Add more flour as needed, until the dough pulls away from the bottom and sides of the bowl and is not too sticky to the touch.

(AB recommends you let it rest for 15 minutes at this point. I'm impatient. I didn't).

Turn the mixer up and let it knead the dough for 5 minutes or so. Knead by hand another thirty seconds.

Roll the dough into a ball an let rise in a large bowl greased with olive oil. AB says one hour. I was out of the house, so I let it rise for about 4.

Pat the risen dough down into a disk and store in the fridge overnight.

An hour before you'll be ready to make the pizza (the actual pizza-making should take you about ten minutes if you have all the toppings chopped and the sauce ready), take the dough out of the fridge and let it benchproof (aka: let it sit on the counter). The yeast need to warm up and wake up again.

An hour later, separate the dough into however many pizzas you want. I made three. Alton makes four 1-2-person-sized pizzas with this dough.

Stretch, roll, or toss and spin the dough into the proper flat, thin pizza shape. (I rolled it out). Put the pizzas on cornmeal or flour dusted cookie sheets and top. Stash any extra dough in the fridge for later (it'll last about a week).

It will take about 4-5 minutes in a 500 degree oven to cook the pizza though. Keep a close eye on it and wait until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbling. (I actually took a bit longer than AB suggested, but I also used bigger pizzas and more toppings than he does).

Toppings
You can, obviously, top this with whatever you like. AB recommends keeping "pizzas very simple: olive oil, a little cheese, a few toppings like herbs and olives."

But "mushrooms," says little sis. So we made a little tomato sauce by cooking some chopped fresh tomatoes, basil leaves, onion, and garlic cloves for about ten minutes and then putting them through my food processor. We lined the dough with the sauce (not quite enough, we found out. We'd went light for fear of making the thin dough soggy, but it actually turned out a little dry). We sprinkled on grated mozzarella cheese, shredded chicken, ground pepper and chopped mushrooms, and then baked it at 500 until golden and bubbly (for maybe five minutes or a little more). Delicious.

For my grandparents, I made two pizzas. On the first, I used the remains of our tomato sauce, mixed with a few spoonfuls of the juice from the kalamata olive jar. I used a more proper amount of sauce this time, and I have to say it was quite an improvement on an already quite good pizza. I sprinkled on mozzarella, thinly sliced zucchini and squash from our garden, and sliced kalamata olives. The sauce added the sweetness of roasted tomatoes and garlic, the zucchini was satisfyingly mellow, and the kalamata olives gave a pleasant zing.

The second pizza had a barbecue sauce base instead of tomato sauce. I grated some jack cheese and tossed on the remaining mushrooms and some thinly sliced red onions and generous grinds of black pepper. Mum liked this one best.

What's your favorite kind of pizza?