I love a theme. Themed decor, party, meal, anything themed. So I planned a homemade pizza night for the family. I made homemade pizza dough and sauce. I did make a coupe additions to the sauce recipe, I added some tomato paste to thicken it up, and I added a little oregano. Red pepper flakes would also be a nice addition, but I didn’t have any.

I cut up some toppings (the green pepper was from my dad’s garden), and bought a small ton of cheese.

The sauce and dough process went perfectly fine. We all had our own ball of pizza dough and I made enough pizza sauce to make 10 pizzas, because cooking for a normal size group of humans is not one of my strengths.

We knew we would have to bake in shifts because we were making five pizzas and have one oven, so I heated that bitch up as high as it would go, and we got to stretching our dough. I got my dough all ready, spread out my sauce, and realized the pepperoni I bought had MOLD. What in the actual hell?! I didn’t even know cured meats could mold. So Chris ran to the store to by replacement pepperoni, while everyone grew hangrier and hangrier. Then the dogs were getting themselves into trouble and trying to counter surf our pizza toppings. So then in addition to being hungry and cranky, we were getting annoyed with the animals.

Chris returned with giant pepperoni, because that is all they had, which fine. We make our pizzas and an hour and a half later we were all done baking our pizzas and the two that got to be baked on the baking steels were perfect, the others were fine. On my pizza I put a layer of sauce, a light sprinkle of shredded mozzarella, onions, green pepper, black olives, mushrooms, a full layer of shredded mozzarella, giant pepperoni, and a sprinkle of Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and shredded Parmesan cheese, plus I brushed the crust with garlic butter. It had all the things I love on a pizza. The sauce tasted very fresh, the crust had a nice texture and tasted like pizza crust, but it could have been crispier on the bottom (my pizza was not baked on the baking steel).

Note to other people wanting to do this, split your pizzas with someone. Like pick a partner and each top half so you can eat faster and bake them all on the baking steel/stone. Then if you need more pizzas, make another half and half pizza.

Lessons were learned. I only cried for like 45 minutes. I won’t do it again anytime soon, but God speed if you choose to do this with more than two people.

Do you ever make homemade pizza with a group? If so, leave your tips for a smooth pizza process in the comments.