Homemade Bread: 3 Ways To Use Pizza Dough At Home

Bread, glorious bread! Who doesn’t love a warm piece of freshly baked homemade bread?  Or homemade pizza dough baked to perfection. And while we are all spending much more time at home in lockdown and quarantine and social distancing, baking homemade bread is a good skill to learn for adults and kids alike. 

Have you joined the quarantine sourdough bread trend? Or broken out that bread machine from last decade? 

If anyone knows my husband Brad, you may also know that he bakes homemade bread as a hobby. On most weekends, you can find him early in the morning mixing bread dough, tending to his sourdough or rolling out homemade croissants…or cinamon rolls…or monkey bread!

And on Fridays he makes pizza dough before work and we enjoy homemade pizza every week. It has become a family tradition in our home and one that I hope our kids remember as adults. 

Today we want to take a look at some of the best homemade bread recipes for you to try at home, whether you want no-time bread or slowly proved bread. Pizza is an easy and fun bread to make and can be used in many different ways. Plus, the ingredients are accessible and cheap and kids love helping in the kitchen with homemade pizza! Enjoy these pizza dough recipes and try them out!

Easy Pizza Dough Recipe

There is nothing better than homemade pizza dough, and this recipe can create the most amazing pizza. If you love pizza and want to enjoy it fresh this week, give this a try!

Ingredients: 

• 500g (about 4.25 cups) strong white bread flour (we also use a mixture of wheat sometimes)
• 7g (about ½ Tablespoon) dried active yeast 
• 325 ml (about 1.25 cups) lukewarm water 
• 1 tsp sugar 
• 1 tsp salt 

1. To start, add the sugar to your lukewarm water and add in yeast. After 5-10 minutes the yeast will be foaming and growing. 
2. Once yeast is ready, pour it into a bowl containing the flour and salt. Mix together with the end of a knife until it begins to come together. Turn out onto a floured work surface. 
3. Set a timer, and knead the bread for 10 minutes. It is important to do this for the whole 10 minutes to gain the strength in the gluten. 
4. Once kneaded, roll into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise for 1-2 hours. 
5. Once risen, punch the dough, turn out onto a floured surface and split into 4 pizzas. At this point you can freeze any dough you don’t want to use yet. 
6. Preheat the oven to 450F, and preheat your pizza stone (or pan). Roll out the dough, place on the pizza tray and top with sauce and toppings, and bake until bubbly. 

Pizza Toppings

We love to experiment with our pizza toppings. The girls prefer plain cheese with garlic salt sprinkled on the crust. My personal favorite is a Margarita with fresh mozzarella, basil and sauce. I also love prosciutto, pear and goat cheese or sausage and extra cheese. Sometimes we’ll add pesto or blue cheese or whatever fruit/veg we have on hand. Occassionally, we’ll cook an egg in the middle of the pizza or sprinkle some balsamic vinegar after it’s cooked, or put arugula with olive oil and lemon juice on top. The options are endless.

Garlic Dough Balls Recipe

Garlic dough balls are the ideal extra to your pizza night, and here we are going to use the pizza dough recipe above to make these perfect little bombs of flavour. 

Ingredients:

• 200g pizza dough 
• 1 block mozzarella (or grated if you can’t find any) 
• 5 tbsp butter 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced 
• 1 small bunch fresh parsley 

1. In a microwaveable bowl, add butter, garlic, and parsley. Melt the butter. Season with a pinch of salt. 
2. Chop mozzarella into small squares. If you are using grated, you’ll just be using small handfuls. 
3. Take some dough in your hand and flatten it out. Place the cheese in the centre and pinch the dough around it. Repeat with all. 
4. Cover the dough balls with your garlic butter. Bake at 220C (450 F) for 15-20 minutes. You’ll know when they are done when they are golden and spongy. 

You can also mix up this recipe by filling the dough balls with some cheese and bacon, with spinach and ricotta and more. Even top them with a sprinkle of Parmesan for a savoury kick! 

Brad’s Monkey Bread Recipe

Occassionally, we have left over pizza dough after an amazing pizza Friday dinner. My husband Brad is notorious for his Saturday morning monkey bread — a lot like cinnamon rolls — so he’ll frequently keep the left over dough and make homemade monkey bread for breakfast on Saturday morning.

Ingredients:

• Pizza dough (enough for one pizza)
• 1/4 cup of Butter (softened)
• 1 Tbsp Cinnamon 
• 1 Cup Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Orange zest (optional)
• Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Roll the pizza dough out into a 6 inch x 18 inch rectangle on a lightly floured surface.  It should be between 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch thick.
3. Spread butter all over the dough, covering the entire top surface.
4. Mix cinnamon, sugar, orange zest, salt in a small bowl.
5. Cover the dough with the sugar mixture.
6. Roll the dough into a log, and slice the log like you are making tiny cinnamon rolls.
7. As you cut the tiny cinnamon rolls, toss them into a 9×5 bread pan that has been buttered or sprayed with oil.  Pile them up into the pan until you’ve cut up the entire log.
8. There will be sugar left on your working surface.  You can scrape this up and sprinkle it on top of the monkey bread.
9. Cook the monkey bread for 20-45 min until it measures 185 degrees F internal temperature. 
10. When the bread is ready, you can flip it onto a cutting board for serving.

You can also make and add icing to pour over with powdered sugar and milk.

Please tag @thewanderingrumpus on all your bread baking adventures. Here are a few more bread-related, kid-friendly recipes to try:

• Pakistani Naan Bread
• Zucchini Bread
• Norwegian Waffles

This post is sponsored by FatJoe Publishing. I only publish sponsored content that I believe my readers will benefit from in some way and fit my brand. The content was edited and partially written by me. All images are my own.