While I was abroad in Italy last semester, my house mates and I decided to take up cooking (we didn’t really have much of a choice). One of my roommates, Ellie, became very interested in learning how to make the perfect pizza. Of course, making the dough from scratch every time is not always doable, so this is the easy, but still fun, way to make a delicious Italian pizza.

Ingredients:

Pre-made dough

5 whole tomatoes

Tomato Paste

Spices (your choice)

Olive Oil

Basil

Mozzarella

Mushrooms

Directions:

1. Roll out the dough onto a pan (be sure to spray the pan down beforehand)

2. Boil a pot of water, and place the tomatoes (unpeeled) into the pot 

3. Let the tomatoes sit in the boiling water for about 5 minutes.

4. Drain the water and put some tomato paste, olive oil, and spices into the pot, mashing and then mixing the whole tomatoes with the rest of the ingredients.

5. Spread the tomato sauce onto the dough, drizzling a little bit of olive oil onto the dough beforehand.

6. Preheat your oven to about 325 degrees Fahrenheit (in this case, our oven didn’t have any specific numbers and it was in Celcius, so take what I say here with a large grain of salt).

7. If your mozzarella is not already sliced, cut somewhat thick slices of mozzarella and spread them evenly across the pizza.

8. Next, you can add some more spices, the basil, and some slice mushrooms (I am personally not a huge mushroom fan, but we also experimented with prosciutto, salami, other cheeses, peppers, and a handful of other vegetables).

9. Place in the oven and cook until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted (again, in our apartment this was not a specific time, it just depended on whether or not the oven cooperated with us).

10. Let cool and then eat!

What I really enjoy about this recipe is that there are no specific amounts or times, meaning you can adjust this recipe to make it exactly what you want. Like I said, we changed up this recipe sometimes and added meats and other vegetables depending on what we were feeling that day.

This is something fun to do with your friends on a rainy day or when you are feeling particularly crafty and up to the challenge of making your own tomato sauce.