There are nights I hate making dinner.  I don’t want to do it and I delay it as long as possible because I don’t even want to think about it.  I am even slowly teaching my kids to cook with the hope that they can take over a couple nights a week.  Tonight they both helped plan and prepare the meal.

I am falling in love with my breadmaker all over again.  My kids love pizza and I am trying to figure out different varieties and crusts to keep it interesting.   I planned an Italian herbed crust to complement the meats of the pizza.

Verdict:

The kids loved this meal and were already claiming the leftovers for the next day before the meal was over.  In our house that is a hit it out of the park success!

I served this with a green salad.

Ingredients:

Herbed Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 TBSP sugar
• 4 cups flour
• 2 tsp active dry yeast

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in your breadmaker in the order in which they are listed.  Use the pizza dough or dough setting on your machine.
2. This will make 2 large pizzas or 2 lbs. of dough.
3. Remove from machine when done.
4. Spread dough in 2 well-greased pans or pizza stone for pizzas.

Three Meat Pizza:

• Pizza Crust from above or your favorite dough
• 8 oz (.5 oz) meatballs cut in half
• 6 oz pepperoni, sliced
• 16 oz Italian sausage, cooked and broken into small pieces
• 2 cups pizza sauce
• 4 cups Mozzarella cheese, shredded
• 1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Poke holes with tines of a fork all over the top of your pizza crusts.
2. Place crusts in oven to bake for 5-8 minutes until well set.  Remove crusts from oven and pop any bubbles that may have formed while cooking.
3. Spread 1 cup pizza sauce, over the top of each pizza crust.  Top each pizza with 1/2 of the rest of the ingredients in this order: pepperoni, meatballs (place on pizza cut side down), sausage, Mozzarella, Monterey Jack and then Parmesan.
4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until pizza crust is browning on bottom and top begins to slightly brown.
5. Remove pizzas from oven and let rest 5 minutes before slicing.