Pizza & Cinnamon
Best Cinnamon Rolls Ever
I had a great idea last night. Ok. It started with yet another mistake – right after I had finished the applesauce fiasco.
Every Friday night, our family loves to unwind with pizza and a special drink – either juice or soda. This has helped us not feel sorry for ourselves when we can’t go out to eat due to money or health restrictions (both of which apply right now!). So this Friday found us making up a batch of our favorite pizza dough. This is my recipe:
1 C warm water
1 tsp sugar
2 ¼ tsp yeast
Combine these in a large bowl until the yeast is bubbly. Add
2 Tbsp olive oil (use a nice-ish one. This is how it gets flavor)
1 tsp salt
2-2 ½ C flour (either white, whole wheat , fresh ground hard wheat or a combination)
Slowly add the flour until the dough makes a ball that cleans the rest of the dough from the sides of the bowl. Let it rise for 5 minutes to 2 hours – however much time you have. The longer you let it rise, the better it will taste. Roll out on a pizza pan, pizza stone or even just a cookie sheet. Top with favorite toppings and bake at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.
I always make a triple batch of this, making two pizzas and either cheese sticks or cinnamon sticks with the third batch. We’ve been doing this on Friday nights for a long time. In fact, in my freezer I have a stock of Ziplocs filled with pepperoni, mozzarella and pizza sauce. A big box store is great for keeping down the cost of these ingredients, and our family goes through a LOT!
Back to the mistake. I’ve made this so many times that I have the recipe memorized. However, that’s when my brain is fully functioning and I have use of both arms. At this point I had my newborn in one arm – he’s not a big fan of being put down around the hour of 5pm at the moment! So by the time I had put in the third ingredient, I realized I had actually quadrupled the recipe instead of just tripling it.
I went ahead and finished out the recipe – but what to do with the fourth batch of pizza dough? Well, I threw it in the fridge and this morning decided to make up a batch of cinnamon rolls with the dough! We’ll see how it turns out in another half hour. But it was simple to roll out the dough in a rectangle, brush on butter and sprinkle on some cinnamon sugar, roll it up, cut 1 ½ inch rolls and place them in a cake pan. They’re rising now! I’ll see how this mistake turns out in another 15 minutes at 350 degrees!
October 15th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Totally scared of using yeast! I’ve recently decided it’s limiting me too much not to use it though, so I’m diving in with your pizza dough recipe. Should I just buy those little red and white packets at King Soopers?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Yeast is not scary! Ok. I guess it could be if you mixed it with water and sugar and left the house for a couple days. It would take over. But it’s not at all hard to use. The only hard part is diving in! The small packets at the grocery store are just fine. Each packet contains the right amount of yeast for a single batch of pizza dough — no measuring needed! I used this kind of yeast for years until I learned that it lasts forever in the freezer and it costs only a little more to get a great big bag of high quality yeast! We’ll be carrying this type in our store later next week, so check back soon!