My bread maker died a few weeks ago and I decided I would begin to make my own bread. I try not to eat too much bread and I mostly used the bread-maker for making pizza dough on Friday nights.

I looked online and found a recipe for homemade bread that was supposedly WONDERFUL… It had to be kneaded for 10 minutes! Are you kidding me? So I made it and got a good arm workout. The bread wouldn’t rise.

Most likely because it’s winter and my house is only around 65 degrees – no where near the 80 degrees suggested for rising.

Even when I heated the oven and stuck the dough in there, it still didn’t do much.

I got a few loaves – the small ones were edible but the large ones were doughy inside.   I tried this recipe once more and still didn’t have much luck so I made Bread Pudding – which no one ate either!  So I gave up on that recipe.

I now have a new bread maker (West Bend)…and it has 2 paddles in the bottom of the pan, which I had never heard of, but this machine didn’t come with a pizza dough recipe!!  Oh no….BUT at Amazon.com (where I purchased it)  a lady had left a message about this machine saying she always made pizza dough too and used the bagel recipe instead.

I used it Friday to make pizza dough (which was a combination of the bagel recipe and my old pizza dough recipe) and it was delicious…even better than my old dough would come out.
So below is the recipe for my bread maker pizza dough.  In case you like to make your own.  Add ingredients in this order and use the dough setting.  Mine takes an hour and a half to complete.

PIZZA DOUGH
1 cup water @ 80 degrees
1 1/2 Tbsp. Olive oil
3 Cups of Bread flour
1 1/2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt.
2 tsp. active dry yeast

I used this to make one large pizza with semi-thick crust. Add some spices such as onion and/or garlic powder and oregano to give the crust a nice flavor.  I also bake the crust first @ 425 for about 10 minutes, then add sauce and toppings and bake @ 425 for about 15 minutes – or until it looks cooked.