Emily's Cooking Blog

Servings : 12

DAY 1 - Pizza Crust

Ingredients

• 1 c. flour plus about 1 c. more

• 2 ¼ tsp. pizza crust yeast

• 1 ½ tsp. sugar

• ¾ tsp. salt

• 2/3 c. very warm water – like bathtub water

• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine 1 c. flour, yeast, sugar, and salt.

2. Add very warm water. Mix until well blended, about 1 minute.

3. Add enough flour to make a soft dough (3/4 to 1 ¼ c.)

4. Dough should form a ball and will still be slightly sticky.

5. Knead on a floured surface adding additional flour if needed, until smooth and elastic; about 4 minutes.

6. Cover in plastic wrap and label.

Day 2

Ingredients

• Pizza dough

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

• 1 cup mayonnaise

• 1 (1 ounce) package dry Ranch-style dressing mix

• 1 cup fresh broccoli, chopped

• 1 cup chopped tomatoes

• 1 cup chopped green bell pepper

• 1 cup chopped cauliflower

• 1 cup shredded carrots

• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. Roll out the pizza dough onto a pizza pan.

3. Bake crust for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Once finished cooking, remove crust from oven and let cool 15 minutes without removing it from the baking sheet.

4. In a small mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, and dry Ranch dressing.

5. Spread the mixture over the cooled crust.

6. Arrange broccoli, tomato, green bell pepper, cauliflower, shredded carrots, and cheddar cheese over the cream cheese layer.

7. Chill for one hour, slice and serve.

The week before the Easter break my Commercial Cooking class made vegetable ranch pizza. I was not to excited for this lab because I had eaten vegetable pizza before and I am not a huge fan to say the least. One thing that went very well in our lab was baking the crust, the dough was done extremely well and turned out great. It was completed faster than the other groups and allowed us to begin working on the remainder of the pizza sooner. One thing that did not go so well was the mixing of the ranch and cream cheese. At first it appeared to be lumpy and as we continued to combine the mixture, the consistency didn’t change. In the end, we did too much stirring causing it to begin to separate as we spread it on the dough. If I were going to change something for next time I would be more careful about how much the ranch and cream cheese mixture gets stirred. Something I learned in class that was very beneficial to properly completing this recipe was how to knead dough. Our dough turned out great because the entire group payed close attention. This lab had many tasks to be completed and was lots of fun.