Happy Healthy Home: Deep Dish Pizza Recipe and Tutorial

I'm going to deviate from my planned posting, I was going to do recipes this week from the Final Four Party but we had a deep dish pizza tonight that in my husband's words was "better than a pizzeria"...SO, I need to blog it so I don't forget what we did.
We is- I'm the crust maker, my husband is the "decorator"...it always works well this way. I call it our pizza dance.

Deep Dish Pizza
Crust-
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast (do not be afraid of yeast)
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
In a mixing bowl, dissolve the yeast with the water and sugar. Add the flour and salt and mix thoroughly. Knead by hand about 5 minutes until nice and pliable.
Add a smidge of olive oil to a deep bowl. Place dough inside, turn and cover with a towel and place in a warm area. Leave it alone for 2 hours!
At the end of two hours, do not punch dough ball down, place dough into deep dish pizza pan (mine is a 12 inch size). Spread and push the dough ball across the bottom of the pan and up the sides.

Toppings~ here is where you can of course get really creative, not sure I'll ever do the mac n cheese pizza thing but this is when you can make it how YOU like it.
Tonight we are just going with what we have on hand and that makes it a vegetarian cheese pizza.
(our first date meal...cheese pizza...awwww!)

So this is where Mr. M takes over.
First layer mozzarella cheese
then the sauce

Sauce Recipe~ (oh this was Reeeaaalllly good)
1 can Dei Fratelli diced tomatoes
place in food processor to smooth out a bit- not pureed and not chunky (remember this is how I made it tonight if this is too putzy for you make up your own sauce!)
This makes 3 cups tomato sauce stuff.
To this add 2 tsp. basil
2 tsp. oregano
Let sit a bit to blend flavors. Or if you didn't plan ahead just put it on your pizza. It's all good!

Top with some parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.
Bake 475 degrees in preheated oven for 20 minutes (in our oven this was perfect)

Now a "tutorial of sorts" for you. No need to be afraid of homemade pizza crust or sauce anymore. I haven't even calculated what a low cost meal this was but I'll tell ya right now A LOT cheaper than hitting the local pizzeria and A LOT cheaper than going to Chicago and having one. Make it at home~ you really can!

Yeast, warm water, sugar getting frothy. The sugar helps this process so don't skip it!

Oil, flour and salt have now been added. Just keep mixing, it takes a little bit and it will soon come together like this...

Now place on counter, dusted with flour to prevent sticking.

Knead until it looks like this~ this is good exercise.

Put it to bed for 2 hours...

If you place in oven for a warm spot, you might want to leave yourself a little note to NOT turn your oven on, forgetting something is in there...

Ahh yeah, good idea. (that's a whole other blog post)

Now's a good time to get your sauce together to "blend those flavors"

No need to refrigerate this for now, just leave out on counter til dough is done. But if that scares you for some reason, you can put it in the fridge.

Top with cheese and then sauce. We used about 2 cups sauce. Yes, I have 1 cup remaining but will make something for the kids to dip in it tomorrow...or could be frozen.