Homemade Pizza with Trader Joe's Dough featuring Fresh Basil

Homemade pizza has always been a go-to meal for me and my boyfriend. In the past, we have created pizzas using store bought items including Boboli crust, pizza sauce, and frozen chicken appetizers. Since my meat-consuming days, we still enjoy tossing ingredients onto a pizza crust for a meal that allows great flexibility - his half, the omnivore's delight, doused in extra parmesan cheese and mine with fresh veggies.

Lately, we have been purchasing the $1 pizza dough from (you guessed it) my favorite store Trader Joe's. Of the three varieties of dough (regular, wheat and garlic & herb), we have been getting the garlic & herb flavor. The instruction says to allow the dough to sit in room temperature for about 20 minutes before kneading and stretching it out on a floured surface. And it only needs 8-10 minutes of cooking at 450 degrees! 

The first time we used this dough, we used the entire amount on a single pizza and immediately added the sauce and toppings before baking for 10 minutes. The crust came out quite doughy and fluffy. While it was still tasty, I prefer a thinner crispy crust so we made a couple of adjustments this time. We split the dough into two and made two pizzas! As if it's not cheap enough, we really stretched our $1 dough (hehe).

Ingredients 

10 basil leaves or so, chopped or ripped up - trimmed off my basil plant

1 hunk of ovoline mozzarella - mine was bought from Whole Foods, a whole tub for about $4

1 organic vine tomato from Whole Foods, diced/sliced to desired size $3.49

1 lb bag of Trader Joe's pizza dough $1

a few dustings of flour onto work surface

(On a side note, I have been loving my little basil plant. It struggled in the few days after I brought it home from Whole Foods due to the unpredictable New England weather. I'm glad to say that it has been thriving on my deck where it receives direct sunlight for a good 6+hrs/day. Basil leaves are a great addition to not only pizzas but also salads such as in this one. I will rant more about herbs in a future post...) 

Preheat oven to 450F.

After 20 minutes in room temperature, divide TJ's pizza dough in half for two ~8'' diameter pizzas. Dust a flat surface with a moderate amount of flour. Knead pizza dough and roll it out into a circular shape (a rolling pin is especially helpful for creating a thin pizza). Since we wanted our pizza to be thin with a crispy crust, our dough was rolled out to <1/2''. Transfer onto a pizza stone.

Pre-bake crust at 450F for about 5 minutes. Add sauce and toppings. Bake for another 10 minutes or until crust edges look light brown.

Pizza #1 (before): Trader Joe's Garlic&Herb dough, Whole Foods ovoline mozzarella, organic vine tomato, fresh basil, Trader Joe's pesto

Pizza #2 (after): Trader Joe's Garlic&Herb dough, Whole Foods ovoline mozzarella, vine tomato, fresh basil, Shaw's pizza sauce

Ready to eat with parmesan cheese&red chili pepper flakes

Making these pizzas was super easy since I already had most of the toppings on hand. I'm especially happy with the way the crust turned out on pizza#2. Each bite of the crust had a great crunch. Finally, for an extra kick to the pesto pizza, I sprinkled on some Trader Joe's Red Chili Pepper flakes.