Deluxe Pizza

Serve this pizza right off the stone

Never frozen, no takeout or delivery, this deluxe pizza is made from scratch. Making pizza at home doesn’t have to be intimidating. Granted, it involves some planning and preparation but what recipe doesn’t. Prepare the pizza in stages and the end result is a delicious pizza with quality toppings that doesn’t taste like the cardboard box it came in. If you’re having people over, make sure you tell them you’re accepting tips!

Today we are going to make a deluxe pizza from start to finish. We call this one “the kitchen sink.” I will have to warn though, it can be a royal pain to slide off the peel. But I do have a couple of remedies for that. Read on.

What do I need to make a deluxe pizza?

• 1 large pizza crust
• ¾ cup of pizza sauce
• 1 cup of diced tomatoes
• 1-2 cups of grated mozzarella 
• ¾ cup of thinly sliced green pepper
• ¾ cup of thinly sliced red pepper 
• ½ cup of thinly sliced red onion
• 4 sliced medium mushrooms
• 4 large green olives pitted and sliced
• 20 – 40 slices of pepperoni 
• 3 slices of bacon (optional) cooked and chopped
• 1 Italian sausage (optional) decased, crumbled and cooked

Useful tools

• measuring scale
• pizza cutter
• pizza stone
• pizza peel
• stand mixer

It’s as easy as pie!

It’s actually easier to put together a family sized pizza than it is for most dinners. Homemade pizza dough can be prepared in advance and refrigerated, for this page however, we are going to make a same day dough with a six hour rise. While the pizza dough is rising, prepare your toppings, grate your cheese and decide how much meat will actually fit on top. We usually start our dough at 10:30 AM. Punch it down at Noon, and let it rise until 4:30. That gives us lots of time to enjoy our day and even preparation.

Homemade dough is just better

There are other options to making dough. You can buy a prepared crust or even a bag of dough from your local grocer. Doing it yourself is pretty straightforward. You can find our post on pizza dough right here. I use a stand mixer and have had very good and consistent results. Weighing the ingredients is also very beneficial. Not only does it give a more exacting level of hydration, it gives more control of the dough itself if you need to make adjustments next time. For example, I was initially using 210 grams of water. I found the dough was wet in the centre after cooking. Reducing the water to 180 grams gives us an ideal crust for our oven.

The sauce

If you’re going through the motions of making pizza, don’t skimp on the sauce. There are actually some pretty good brand name sauces out there. We’ve actually run out of pizza sauce and thawed out some of Kim’s spaghetti sauce from the freezer. A tomato and ground beef sauce, that was a fine pizza. A lot of the time we’ll prepare our own sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes. You can find that pizza sauce recipe right here. 

So it all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into your pizza. Our sauce recipes makes enough for 5 large pizzas so you can freeze it in portions.

Getting pizza off the peel

I’m sure we’re not the only people who’ve had a pizza stick to the peel. The stone is hot and waiting, you try to slide the pizza off the peel and it’s stuck. It doesn’t usually happen with small pizzas but a fully loaded large pie can give some serious grief. The answer? Parchment paper. Build the pizza on parchment paper and slide the works onto the peel, paper and all. Parchment paper is generally safe for 420℉, I have used it without issue at 450℉. Simply slide out the parchment paper when cooking at the 5 minute mark. Don’t be too aggressive, give it a tug first and make sure it’s separated from the pizza. It should slide out from between the pizza and the stone with ease. I got overly confident once and just about yanked the pizza off the peel.

Enough said, here’s our recipe for deluxe pizza

Deluxe Pizza

All the toppings for a rockin’ pizza pie

5 from 1 vote

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Preheat oven 1 hour hr

Total Time 30 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine American, Canadian, Italian

Servings 8 slices

Calories 273 kcal

Ingredients

  

• 1 large pizza crust
• 1 cup diced tomatoes
• 1 cup mozeralla grated
• ¾ cup green pepper thinly sliced
• ¾ cup red pepper thinly sliced
• ½ cup red onion thinly sliced
• 4 med mushrooms sliced
• 4 large green olives pitted
• 20 pepperoni slices
• 3 slices bacon (optional) cooked and chopped
• 1 Italian sausage (optional) decased, crumbled and cooked

Instructions

 

• Blend diced tomatoes until smooth. If watery, simmer and reduce over low heat for several minutes. Allow to cool.
• Spread sauce evenly over prepared pizza crust. Add ¾ cup of cheese, disperse evenly over crust. Add green and red peppers, onions mushrooms and olives. Add the remaining cheese and top with pepperoni and any additional bacon or sausage.
• Preheat oven for 1 hour @ 450℉. If using a pizza stone, be sure to heat the stone from cold with the oven or it will crack. 

  Cook the pizza for approx. 10 minutes, rotating halfway. Edges should be golden brown. 

Notes

Preparation times do not take making the pizza dough into consideration.

Keyword deluxe, homemade pizza, pizza

You’ll be hooked

Pulling that homemade pizza out of the hot oven, sliding it onto the cutting board and hearing the crunch of that perfect crust as you slice through it. A thin dough that is crispy on the exterior and bread like inside. Knowing that you hand picked all the toppings. Knowing that several hours ago, the crust didn’t even exist. That is truly, the joy of cooking.