I’ve had a few liberating moments in my life: getting a driver’s license; starting college; graduating from college; traveling abroad for the first time. But none of these compare to the freedom of being able to bake pizza from scratch.

Imagine having a brick-oven pizzeria that delivers 24/7/365. Except it’s not a pizzeria, it’s yourself. Here’s how to make it happen.

This is all adapted from articles elsewhere on the web: this pizza dough recipe, this sauce recipe, and this advice from the NYTimes.

It’s true that there is an art to pizza-making, but don’t get bogged down in details. Even if you get something wrong, it’ll still be pretty damn good–an approach you should take to most cooking.

EQUIPMENT YOU’LL NEED

• Pizza stone. This is important for a good crust, as explained in the NYT article above. I got a 14″ stone at Target for $10. You can get nicer (i.e. more expensive) ones at a kitchen supply store or on Amazon, but this isn’t necessary.
• Pizza peel or alternative. To transfer your pizza to the stone (which by the time you are using it is sitting in a 550-degree oven), you’ll need a flat surface the pizza can slide around on. A real pizza peel is the easiest to use for this, but a baking sheet without an edge, or even a cutting board, could work, as long as you keep it non-stick by putting a lot of flour / cornmeal on it.
• An oven that can go to 500 or 550°F.
• A countertop, table, or some other flat surface to work on.
• A mixing bowl or large pot.
• Plastic wrap or a kitchen towel

GENERAL PROCEDURE

1. Make dough. Let it rise overnight.
2. Preheat oven with stone in it.
3. Prepare toppings and sauce. Rise dough again for an hour.
4. Form the crust, put on toppings, bake.
5. NOMNOMNOM.

STEP 1: MAKE DOUGH

For 2 x 9-inch crusts, you need:

• 2 cups flour. I like bread flour but AP is ok too.
• 3/4 cups lukewarm water.
• 1 1/2 tsp dry yeast
• 1 tsp salt

Briefly mix the salt and flour in a big bowl or pot. Dissolve the yeast in the water–this might be difficult at first, but stir it for a while and it’ll smoothen out. Use your fingers to break up any yeast clumps. Add the yeast/water mixture to the flour and salt, and mix with your hands. The dough will stick to your fingers pretty tenaciously, but just keep mixing (rub your hands together to get dough off) until your hands and the sides of the bowl are mostly clean, and all the dough is incorporated into a single ball.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel, leave it in the bowl/pot, and let sit in a dark, warm (70-80°F) place for 3-24 hours. Overnight rises will give you better dough, but even a few hours will be enough for a decent pizza.

STEP 2 & 3: START OVEN, SECOND RISE, PREP TOPPINGS

Sauce for 2 x 9″ pizzas:

• A 14.5oz can of tomatoes, diced or crushed
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Toppings for classic Margherita:

• A ball of fresh mozzarella
• A few leaves of fresh basil
• Optional: sliced tomatoes

Toppings for sausage pizza:

• One sweet Italian sausage
• Sliced mushrooms
• Sliced red onions
• Shredded mozzarella

Put the pizza stone in the oven and preheat to as high as it will go (500-550°F). Let the stone heat for about an hour

Take the dough out of the container you left it to rise in, and put it on a well-floured surface. Cut it in half and form into two balls. Cover these with plastic wrap or a towel and let rise another hour. This is to make up for the lost air when you handle it.

For the sauce, put the can of tomatoes in a saucepan, pour in the olive oil, and cook on low heat until there’s almost no liquid left (about 30-45 min).

Pre-cook the sausage by taking it out of its casing and scrambling it in a frying pan over high heat. It should be in small bits and chunks by the time it’s cooked (brown on the outside).

Other toppings, like the basil, mushrooms, and onions don’t need to be cooked, but if you use heartier vegetables like zucchini or eggplant, you should sauté them briefly in olive oil.

STEP 4: MAKE PIZZA

Take one of the two balls of dough you set aside in the last step and put it on a floured surface. Push it out into a flat 9″ circle with your fingertips, taking care not to stretch it or press it too hard. Spread tomato sauce on it to within 1/2″ of the edge. Put toppings on pizza, saving the cheese to put on last. For the Margherita, you can tear off chunks of the fresh mozzarella and just leave them on the pizza to melt down. For the sausage pizza you should add the shredded mozzarella last, so it can melt over all the other toppings.

When the pizza stone and oven are hot, transfer the pizza onto the stone using a peel or well-floured baking sheet. Bake for 7-10 minutes, then remove from oven with the peel. Cut with a pizza cutter (or I just used a chef’s knife).

WARNING: If you’re not using a professional pizza peel, there is a danger of it sticking to your work surface when you’re trying to move it onto the stone, which is very annoying. Avoid this by putting lots of flour–or better yet, wheat bran or cornmeal–on your surface before starting to work, and shifting it around once in a while to keep the dough from sticking. Also let the sauce / toppings cool before putting them on–warm, wet sauce will seep through a thin crust and promote sticking.

STEP 5: EAT

Eat.

NOTES

You can make dough in advance and refrigerate it for a few days, or freeze it for a week or two. Make sure to let the dough thoroughly warm up / thaw before you try making a pizza with it. Sauce can also be prepared in advance, although I don’t recommend freezing it — as such it should only be kept a few days in the fridge.