Homemade Pizza Dough

Ever since I learned how to make my own pizza dough last year, we hardly order pizza at a restaurant anymore. This dough is very easy to make, plus it's natural, healthier and convenient to use. It can be stored in the freezer for 3 months. Just take it out to thaw, knead again, and cut off a piece, to roll and make a fresh, new pizza.

It doesn't matter if your pizza is not perfectly round as you roll it out. Let it have a rustic look. The kids just like to make strange shapes with the dough, so it's fun!

But if you sometimes have pangs of OCD like me, just turn over a plate on top of the rolled out pizza dough, and trim off the excess.

Homemade pizza crust with salami, mozzarella, chili flakes and fresh arugula.

Polenta Dough: for Extra Crispy Pizza & Flatbread Canapes

(This post is part of an ongoing series on the 2014 Singapore Blog Awards, sponsored by Panasonic.)

Homemade Flatbread with with Cheese & Horseradish Cream, Dill & Roe 

My family makes pizza dough from scratch, and we usually make it by hand. Homemade pizza is much healthier than commercially available ones (whether from a fast food restaurant or the frozen food section of the supermarket.). In addition, it challenges the family's creativity in using different ingredients versus your run-of-the-mill ham and pineapple or pepperoni and cheese.

I make the dough in advance and if the kids don't devour it right there and then, I store the extra dough in the freezer, oiled, wrapped in plastic wrap in a plastic container, so it doesn't dry out. Then we just take it out a few hours before we want to eat pizza. What makes this dough different is that it makes for extra crispy pizza (see tips below).

This time, I tried using the Panasonic Bread Maker, instead of making the dough by hand. It turned out well and saved me a lot of time! What would've taken me 2 hours to make took only 45 minutes with the bread maker.

So in this post, I'm going to share 2 recipes using the same dough. I will share some very different pizza flavours, and another recipe to show how you can use the very same dough to make some mini flatbread, topped with a mix of cream cheese and horseradish sauce, fish roe and dill. It really looks impressive and fancy, and makes for good hors d'oeuvres, but it's actually easy to make! My kids actually  helped to cut the dough into squares and once baked, top them with the cheese mix, the cut fresh dill and the roe. Too beautiful to eat and definitely more than presentable enough to serve at parties. But we didn't have a party this weekend, so the kids just devoured them for their afternoon snack!