Super Bowl game plan: Score big by letting guests make their own pies. These 5 steps make it a snap.
Keep it simple (and cheap!) and give 'em what they want with a build-your-own pizza party. You have three choices: Make your own dough (it's really easy), use store-bought dough (even easier), or for the ultimate in simplicity, pick up a few packaged thin pizza crusts, such as Boboli. A nice bonus: Use any leftover pizza toppings while making next week's soups, salads, pastas or omelets.
1. Make or select a crust
EASY: Simple Pizza Dough, below
EASIER: 2 1-pound packages of refrigerated pizza dough; follow the cutting and stretching instructions listed under Simple Pizza Dough.
EASIEST: 2 packages of 12-inch thin pizza crusts
Simple Pizza Dough
Makes 8 long, thin pizzas
1/2 cup, plus 1 1/4 cups, warm water
1 envelope (or 2 tsps.) active dry yeast
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
4 cups bread flour
2 tsps. salt
Cornmeal for baking sheets
Measure 1/2 cup warm water into a 2-cup measuring cup. Whisk yeast into water; let stand until it bubbles, about 5 minutes. Add remaining 1 1/4 cups water and the oil to yeast mixture.
Pulse flour and salt in a large food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pour liquid mixture over flour; pulse to form a rough, soft ball. Process until dough is smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds more.
Turn dough onto a floured work surface and knead for a few seconds to form a smooth ball. Place in a bowl that has been sprayed with vegetable cooking spray. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise to double in size, 2 to 3 hours.
Sprinkle 2 18-by-12-inch baking sheets with cornmeal. Then, without punching it down, empty dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Using a chef's knife or a metal dough scraper, cut dough into 8 fairly equal pieces. One portion at a time, stretch dough into a rough 12-by-4-inch rectangle. Place stretched dough crosswise on 1 of the prepared baking sheets. Repeat with remaining stretched dough, fitting 4 stretched pieces per baking sheet.
2. Prepare no-cook sauces
Red sauce: Mix 1Ú2 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes, 2 minced garlic cloves and 1 Tb. extra-virgin olive oil. Makes enough for 6 12x4 or 2 large packaged thin-crust pizzas.
White sauce: 1 cup part-skim ricotta, 2 Tbs. milk, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1Ú2 tsp. oregano, and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. Makes enough for 3 12x4 pizzas or 1 large packaged thin-crust pizza.
Pesto sauce: Mix 1Ú2 cup each of part-skim ricotta and prepared pesto. Makes enough for 3 12x4 pizzas or 1 large packaged thin-crust pizza.
3. Pre-bake pizza dough
Adjust oven racks to lowest and middle positions and heat oven to 450 degrees. Spread your sauce of choice on each homemade or store-bought stretched dough rectangle. Bake up to 4 at a time (or 8, if you have a double oven) on the bottom oven rack until the pizza bottoms are spotty brown, 10 to 12 minutes. The baked crusts can be left at room temperature for up to 2 hours.
*Packaged crusts don't need to be pre-baked. Just add sauce, then toppings, and bake following package instructions.
4. Let guests top pizzas
Just before topping the pizzas, toss peppers, onions and mushrooms separately with a little olive oil and salt. Put your toppings of choice in bowls.
1/2 each yellow, red and green bell peppers, stemmed, cored and cut into short, thin strips
1 large red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 pound thinly sliced mushrooms
4 cups shredded rotisserie chicken
1 pound bulk Italian sausage (or links removed from casings), fried
4 6.5-ounce cans chopped clams, drained
1 16-ounce jar pitted Kalamata olives, halved
1 to 1 1/2 pounds shredded mozzarella cheese
5. Bake one more time
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake topped pizzas on middle rack until crusts crisp and cheese melts, about 5 to 7 minutes. (If using two oven racks, choose the upper and lower-middle racks.) Serve.
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