Pizza Night

I have been wanting to make a pizza at home for awhile now, and my recent purchase of this pizza stone from Crate and Barrel gave me the perfect opportunity. It is such a quick and easy way to make a fresh pizza at home, and allows you complete control of the amounts and types of ingredients you want.

For this pizza, I used a premade pizza crust from the store, but I plan to start making my own crusts next time. I have also heard Trader Joe's pizza crusts are terrific, and come in a variety of flavors.

1 thin pizza crust (premade)
1/2 cup tomato sauce (I used Classico Spicy Tomato & Basil)
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
toppings - I used chopped onion, oregano, and fresh basil, plus salami & roma tomatoes on Nick's half

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place pizza stone in the middle of the oven to preheat; it needs about 15 - 20 minutes to heat up enough to make your pizza nice and crispy. Sprinkle stone with cornmeal

Bake pizza at 450 for about 8 - 10 minutes until crust is browned and cheese is bubbly. Remove pizza from stone to cut and serve

*note about cleaning your pizza stone: never use soap on your stone to clean; it is like a sponge and will suck all liquids right up. The manufacturer recommends submerging your baking stone in warm, clear, plain water for 15-20 minutes. This should thoroughly saturate the stone with clean water and dilute the soap residue. Next, remove the stone from the water and place it on a cooling rack on your kitchen counter. Allow the stone to dry completely overnight.