Homemade Pizza for the Homeless

Nothing beats homemade pizza.  I remember growing up, my mom always made us the Chef Boyardee box pizza.  It's like a box cake mix for pizza.  It comes with pizza dough powder that you mix with water and rise, can of sauce, and dry cheese.  You are suppose to add any fresh topping and mozzarella cheese.  My mom always added hamburger (when I was not a veggie), olives, onions, and mushrooms.  If you've never had this, I highly recommend as a fun eats. It's not the best, but it's about memories...  A few years ago, I asked my mom why we just didn't order pizza and why she always made it, and she said it was because her and my dad didn't speak English very well so it was hard to just order Domino or Pizza Hut.  I never thought about that. (sniff, sniff).  


Anyways, we made fresh pizza for the homeless cooking back in January I believe.  It was really tasty and amazingly easy.  The homeless folks loved it!  We the volunteers loved it!  We always taste what we serve.  We made everything from scratch!  Check out pics below.


I made the dough the night before the cooking event so it would rise overnight.  The recipe I followed was actually a bread recipe called the "No Knead Bread".  (Click link for recipe)  If you don't know about this recipe, it's pretty popular and you can find ton's youtube videos on it too.  My friend Anya makes this bread and gave me the tip to use it for pizza as well, and she was right. (Thanks Anya!) It was easy and superb.  What I like about this recipe is that it gives the dough a nice chewy, yeasty crust.  We didn't have cornmeal but I like to add cornmeal on the bottom of the pan to give an additional texture to the crust.   Make sure to top it with lots of olive oil so it doesn't stick too much to pan and plastic wrap.  

Here is the finished product.  We topped it with fresh basil.

I forgot this kid's name but he was so good. He pretty much took charge of assembling all the pizzas before they went into the oven. He scooped the sauce, added the various toppings and cheese.  Love him!

We received a box of grapefruit and made salad out of it.  Segmenting grapefruit takes some skills.  Lucky we had Hamed with us that day and show Darren how to do.

It was still winter so we made some kind of stew or soup here.  I forgot...Eckhart made this one.

All in all, it was a great cooking event.  Really fun to do pizza.  I need to suggest we do this again really soon.  Let me know if any of you tried making your own.