Yep, we had homemade pizza for dinner. On a weeknight. I even made the dough myself.  But lest you think I’m Super Suzy Q. Homemaker, let me introduce you to my favorite new item at the grocery store.

My aunt found this stuff and introduced it to my mom, who is absolutely nuts for it. Perhaps even more so because she CANNOT get it in Illinois. None of the local grocery stores carry it, and you couldn’t buy it online (now, apparently, you can… but it’s more expensive).  It’s like the frigging Wii of yeast. Feel free to check and see if your grocery chain carries it, but know that I ended up on a wild goose chase at my LEAST favorite supermarket in the area.  I bought about 20 packets and sent them all to my mom.

But what makes it awesome is not that it’s necessarily the most awesome pizza crust you’ve ever had the privilege of eating… it’s that you don’t have to let the dough rise.  Seriously, you just mix it up, knead it for a couple of minutes, and make your pizza.

Even with a pair of, ahem, “helpers” and worse-than-usual time management on my part, I still had it out of the oven barely an hour after deciding to make it.

Just toss the ingredients into a bowl (I use about half whole-wheat flour), mix it up with some hot tap water and a little olive oil.  A bunch of the flour gets kneaded in post-mixing, as it’s a very sticky dough.

I bake mine in a lightly-greased half sheet pan, and could care less what shape the dough turns into.  I cook up some Italian sausage, caramelize some onions, and sauté some red pepper (or, at least, I was going to… forgot I already used it earlier in the week).  No sauce.  Mix of shredded mozzarella and Monterey Jack with a healthy amount of salt, pepper, and oregano.

YUM.

The recipe is on the packet, and one package of yeast makes a pizza that’s easily big enough for three or four adults, depending on your appetite. M and I alone do some serious damage to this thing.  The kids, sadly, refused to taste it. Maybe some day.

Anyways, there are plenty of other great pizza recipes out there.  But if you want to decide at 5PM on a weeknight that you’re making pizza for dinner, here’s a way.

And no, FTC, nobody asked me to write this. I just love me some homemade pizza.