Homemade pizza is really quite easy. I’ve published my pizza dough recipe here and the great thing about it is that it makes enough for 4 pizzas and any remaining dough can be frozen. And while it’s easy, it does require some thinking ahead to defrost the dough and to preheat the oven and stone at 500 degrees F one hour prior to cooking.

Pizza is a great party idea for kids and adults alike. It’s a hands on, participation kind of thing. It’s exactly what we did for my daughter’s last birthday.

For that event, I purchased a new, larger pizza stone at AceMart, so I’d have one for each oven. I divided the dough into smaller portions so the girls made their own personal pizzas.

And instead of doing the usual cornmeal on pizza peel to slide the pizza onto the stone, we used parchment, which was enormously helpful. The larger stone allowed 2 or 3 personal pizzas per oven, and the parchment made it easy to scoot the pizzas around on the stone to make room for them.

If I were making pizza for an adult or family gathering, I’d get a little more exotic with toppings, maybe some combo of  fontina, sauteed shiitakes and mint or this caramelized onion, sun dried tomato and goat cheese option.

I typically serve Caesar salad with it.  Add some red wine, Italian of course, and you are good to go. Cheers to pizza! -alyce eyster

photo: fulton davenport