Date Night Recipe

So Thursday nights during the Fall are very much looked forward to by my husband and I....why you may ask?? We LOVE the TV line up so much that we look forward to it like it is the weekend! Since this week was premiere week I decided to start a new tradition for our Thursday nights! I will make a NEW recipe for dinner and the hubbs will pick up a bottle of wine on his way home to go with it. I love trying new recipes so, I took this as an excuse to make a date night out of it. This week I decided to make a homemade pizza.....like, I am going to make the dough and all!

Thick Crust Sausage & Cheese Pizza {with prosciutto}
{adapted from a recipe here)

1 tablespoon yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups lukewarm water
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 lb. mild ground Italian sausage
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/3 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into thin ribbons
crushed tomatoes
shredded mozzarella cheese {I used fresh mozzarella too}
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. The dough takes a while to make because you have to let it sit and rise on 2 occasions so, make sure you leave plenty enough time for this process. Put the yeast, sugar, and warm water in a mixing bowl and give it a quick stir.

2. Let this mixture sit for about 10 minutes for the yeast to activate. It should look like this at the end of the 10 minutes.

3. Add the flour to your yeast mixture.

4. Stir the ingredients until combined {try not to over work the dough, as this will cause it to be tough}

5. Cover the bowl with a few warm, moist paper towels and set it aside to rise {untouched} for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

6. While the dough is rising, fry the sausage over a medium-high heat until it is nicely browned. Set the sausage aside to cool.

7. Now that the dough has set for an hour and doubled in size, it is ready to be put in the pan. Cover your pan with parchment paper so the dough does not stick. Pour the dough into the pan and spread it {with you hands} until it touches all four corners.

8. Set the dough aside for another hour to let it rise again. At the end of the hour, the dough should look like this.

9. Bake the pizza crust at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and makes a hollow noise when you tap on it with a finger.

10. Now the fun part....TOPPINGS! First, I spooned on the tomato sauce. This step is all about preference...put as much tomato sauce as you would like.

11. Add the sausage on top of the tomato sauce.

12. Add the remainder of the ingredients in the following order: basil, prosciutto, and then mozzarella. I decided to put fresh mozzarella chunks on half of the pizza and shredded mozzarella on the other half.

13. Sprinkle the entire pizza with a little salt and pepper and bake for about 15 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

This pizza is perfect for a {stay-in} date night. I hope you enjoy this recipe!

What T.V. shows do you look forward to watching during the week?

Happy Friday!