Grab your mixing bowls, measuring cups, and ingredients.

Let's get cooking.

Support for Amy LaBelle's Cooking with Kids is provided by AutoFair, Cook Little Rosenblatt and Manson, D.F.

Richard Energy, Granite State Development Corporation, New England Dairy, Northeast Delta Dental, Stonyfield Organic, Unitil, Enterprise Bank, White Mountains Community College, Monadnock Food Co-op, Macaroni Kids Seko's, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Amy LaBelle from LaBelle Winery.

I'm a winemaker but I actually really love to cook, too.

And I love especially to cook with my family and today I have with me my son Jackson and my son Lucas.

And we're going to show you how to make a delicious pizza dough recipe at home that you will use over and over and over again.

This recipe is easy, it's fast, it's super yummy.

Right?

And it's really inexpensive, really pennies on the dollar to pizza that you buy out at the store or at a pizzeria.

And what I love about this is you'll know exactly what's in it, you can have the freshest ingredients, and you can make it exactly how you want it to be.

So with that, why don't we go ahead and get started.

Guys, what we want to do, I mean, we make pizza dough a lot, so you kind of know what's going on but we'll follow along together and I hope you join us at home, and certainly that you have all your recipes ready.

Actually, let's talk about some ingredients.

When I make recipes at home, I really like to measure out all my ingredients beforehand.

If you want to be fancy about it, that is called mise en place and that means everything in its place and everything ready to go before you get started.

So then you know that you're not going to be missing an ingredient or searching for an ingredient while you're trying to get your recipe together.

So as you see, we have everything ready to go.

So we've got 3/4 cup of warm water and you're going to dump that into your bowl.

Now, what do we mean when I say warm water?

Well, you know, your body temperature at home kiddo's, is 98 degrees hopefully, and if you're 98 degrees and you touch water and it feels warm to your finger, then you're right about at the right temperature for our next ingredient, which is yeast.

Pick up your yeast.

There it is, we'll show the folks at home.

Yeast is a single celled organism that will help us make our pizza dough rise and give it lift and bubbles.

And the great thing about yeast is you can freeze dry it and kind of hold it in time until you're ready to use it.

And then when you introduce it to warm water, meaning water that's over 100 degrees, so between 100 and 104 if you have a thermometer and you want to take the temperature of it you can do that, but like I said, if I put my finger in this water, feels slightly warm to me, I know it's about 100 degrees and the yeast is going to love that.

So the yeast likes a warm bath, so we're going to sprinkle the yeast right over the top of our water.

And now the yeast is starting to wake up and we can put all our cups together so we don't make a giant mess.

The yeast is starting to wake up, it is starting to search for nutrients, because the yeast likes to eat just like a person, so the yeast is starting to say, hey, I've been sleeping for a long time.

I want to wake up, where's my food?

So we're going to give him some food.

So to that end, we have some honey.

All right.

We've got about a tablespoon of honey here and you have a spoon right here, which you can use to scoop it out, you're welcome.

I'm going to use this fork and that's fine.

We're dump our honey in.

Now, the honey has sugar in it.

If you all have tasted honey, you know that honey is a little bit sweet, it's got some sugar.

And that is going to feed this yeast.

So we can kind of give that a quick little stir, we don't have to stir it in all the way, but kind of mix it in a little bit.

Then we can take our salt, which is in this black cup, here you can have this one.

I'll take this one and we can sprinkle our salt over.

The salt is for flavor.

Recipes without salt are kind of sad, you need a little bit of salt to bring out all the other awesome flavors in a recipe.

And we'll also pull our oil.

This is the Winemaker's Kitchen Extra Virgin Olive Oil and it is delicious, and it's going to make our dough very supple and soft and beautiful.

All right.

So let's collect up all our things, you can put down your forks.

I like to kind of keep my kitchen neat while we're working.

And we'll give this just a minute or so to kind of bloom.

That yeast has to come alive and it starts to eat all of the sugar in the honey, right?

Yeah.

And it's going to come alive and it's going to start to create bubbles.

And those bubbles are carbon dioxide and that's what's going to help our pizza have lift and have our dough have rise so everything is going to taste extra delicious.

But anyway, I like to try to keep my work area clean so that we have lots of space to work.

All right, let's take our forks and we want to whisk together those ingredients.

That's OK. All right, good.

And if you can see on the top of the yeast there.

There's bubbles.

It is, it's starting to bubble.

Those yeasts are coming alive.

All right, put your fork down, we're going to start to introduce the flour.

So get your flour together, we've got 2 cups of all purpose flour, you don't have to do anything fancy on the flour.

Don't dump the whole thing in just yet, we're going to save just a little bit in the bottom of this flour so that we can add it in slowly.

The thing about flour and you making dough is that it doesn't always act the same.

So, maybe depending on the weather or the temperature or the humidity or what's happening in the world, you might need 2 cups of flour for this recipe, you might need slightly less, you might need slightly more.

So what we're going to do is reserve some for the end so that we can add it in just if we need it.

So let's sprinkle some flour over the top.

This yeast we're using today, I should tell you, is instant yeast so we'll be able to make our pizza dough right away, but you'll see in the recipe that if you use regular yeast, which is not as quick acting, we'll need to treat it a little bit differently and we'll talk about that.

So I'm going to put a little more than half.

Maybe save like a 1/2 a cup in the bottom of your little bucket here, OK. You can keep going.

More?

Yeah, you're good.

I'll help you.

All right, there you go, save the rest.

Incorporate this all together, you know what, forget the forks.

Let's use our fingers.

When I use my hands to cook though, I like to try to keep one hand clean.

You don't, I guess.

No.

I'm going to just keep one hand clean so I have one hand to use ingredients, to pick up ingredients with, but you start to bring in that flour.

Now you see, this is very wet, so I still need more flour, so I'm going to put a little more flour in mine and you guys are going to need more too.

Both your hands are dirty!

Look at that.

You see what happens.

There you go.

See, I still have one clean hand.

You need a little more?

Yes.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, so we bring all this together and pretty soon we're going to dump this whole bowl right out on the counter and we're going to start to knead it on the counter.

So this is the fun part about making dough, it's kind of messy, but it cleans itself up eventually and all as well.

So if you can use your fingers to pull all this together.

All right.

Look at that, mine's coming together into a nice little dough.

It's kind of a loose dough right now, it's still too wet, it needs a little more flour, and after you make this a couple of times you get used to that and you say, all right, well, you get the feel for it and you know when it needs a little more flour and when it doesn't.

I'm going to add a little more flour to mine and then I'm going to put it out on the counter.

How's yours coming along?

You need a little more?

Yeah, can I have more flour?

Yeah.

I think mine's perfect right now.

Yeah, that looks good, you can put that on the counter.

So clear off your space.

And go ahead and dump your bowl right onto the counter, I'm going to do the same thing.

We can put our bowls together.

Here you go.

Thank you.

All right.

And this too, I'm going to put this aside.

All right.

How's that coming along?

Very good.

When you dump on to your counter at home, if your mom and dad don't mind.

Mom, where should I put this?

Oh, I'll take that for you.

When you dump on to the counter at home, you want to put a little flour underneath your dough.

That'll help it not stick to the counter, OK?

And then we're going to start to knead it together.

Look, this is coming into a nice little dough, it's kind of loose and beautiful.

How are you doing over there?

Pretty good.

Yeah?

Feels nice?

Feels like it's coming along?

It's coming together good.

All right.

You kind of get a feel for this over time and you'll decide how exactly you like your pizza dough.

But with this flour on the counter and one clean hand.

It's sort of clean.

Sort of clean.

It'll get clean now, the dough from your handle start sticking into the dough that's in front of you and your hands will actually kind of self clean.

OK.

So the proper kneading technique is to kind of push with your hand and gather it back up.

And push with your hand and gather it back up and that kind of incorporates all of that flour together into this beautiful little dough.

And this dough is so useful, boy, you can use this to make all kinds of things, not just pizza.

You can use this to make breadsticks or you can use it to make calzones or you can make a little pizza knots, we make those sometimes around here.

Like pizza pillows, those are fun.

Those are good.

Those are good.

And we eat a lot of those.

And you can stuff them with all kinds of fun things.

You don't have to stick to pepperoni and cheese, you could use sausages or you could do steak and cheese bombs.

Yeah.

So, all kinds of variety you can do there.

And I'm just going to put a little more flour, turns out I had I think just the right amount of flour today.

How about you?

Oh jeez.

You need a lot more flour.

So if your dough is really sticky like Lucas's, then you really need more flour.

I thought I was good but then-- That's OK, it happens.

The flour gets incorporated into the dough and then it starts to get sticky again, then you need more flour, so it's all right.

My dough is done, I think.

This is how it looks when it's done, it's kind of soft and stretchy.

And this is ready to go in the oven for me.

I'm going to actually roll this out but I'll wait for you.

I'll get my board ready.

You think you're done?

Yep.

Yeah?

I'm actually going to suggest that we break these in half.

So again, we're using instant yeast, which means we can go right into the oven.

If you're using regular yeast, which is great and totally fine, you can take this ball of dough and put it in an oiled bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about an hour, then you make your pizza.

All right, so that's the only difference, it doesn't matter.

The fast yeast you just don't have to do that step.

All right, I'm cutting my dough in half because I'm going to make a little personal pizza and I think you should too.

You can use my bench scraper if you want.

There you go.

I'm going to put a little more flour on the board and we're going to get ready to just a tiny bit, I might need some of your flour, too.

All right.

And we will use our little rolling pins.

How are you doing over there?

Pretty good.

Yeah?

You don't need knead that up a little bit more or are you good?

I'm going to take some of your extra flour away.

There you go.

Let's cut that dough in half, OK?

And we'll roll it out.

So we'll take our rolling pins.

Thanks.

Here's your ruling pin.

Let me clear up your counter a little bit.

Oh that's fine.

Oh, this is nice and warm.

Dough feels so fun to play with in your hands too and you can make shapes with it and use it like Play-Do too, just like when you go to fun pizza restaurants they'll give you a ball of dough to play with.

It's fun, feels good in your hands.

Oh, yeah, you need a little flour under your dough on the counter so it doesn't stick.

There you go.

And a little flour on your rolling pin, too.

You can have mine.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right, good job.

Now do we just roll it out?

And you can roll it out.

The dough started to come off my hand.

Yes, it will, it'll get incorporated right into your dough.

Still a little bit but not that much.

That's all right, that's what it sinks are for.

It's OK to get messy.

It's fun to get messy sometimes, right?

I'm going to put a little more flour on top of my dough.

And you can roll this out basically into a thin crust pizza or a thick crust pizza, whatever your preference is, that's the nice thing about knowing how to cook.

You get to make things just the way you like them.

All right, I think we're almost ready to make our pizza.

See how fast that is.

It's faster than ordering takeout.

And you only need a couple of cups of flour and some common ingredients.

And you will have a healthy, fresh wonderful meal.

I think this is looking pretty good.

So, I'll show you at home how this should kind of look and feels.

It almost feels like fabric in your hands, look at how it moves, and it stretches a little bit.

And if it breaks, look I broke a hole in mine, and that's OK. We're just going to pop that right back on the counter and pinch it together.

These shouldn't be perfect.

They shouldn't even be round.

They should just be exactly the shape they want to be.

Wait, can I have some of your flour?

Absolutely.

Oh, and I have some more.

Your sticky?

It's sticking to the roller.

Yeah, flour is your best friend on your roller.

You can run it right through your hand on the roller like this so that your roller won't stick to the dough.

That looks good.

All right, shall we put our pizzas on the board?

You can keep rolling yours.

You have another minute or two.

All right, you go ahead.

You can't rush perfection.

One thing I want to show our viewers at home is that if we use a bit of corn meal on the bottom of your pan before you put your dough down, it won't stick.

And you'll be able to get it out of the oven so easy, so I love that trick.

My friend James taught me that trick a long time ago.

There's my pizza dough.

You see?

It is not perfect.

Should I make mine thinner?

It's up to you.

That's the beautiful thing.

Yeah, let's flip it over and roll it out a little bit thinner and I'm going to move this out of your way.

Good.

Oh, that looks good.

That looks really good.

Do I get one of those metal things now?

Yep, I will get one for you.

You want to do your own cornstarch or do you want me to do it?

I'll do it.

Hold your dough up.

Or we can put it on the side.

There you go.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Good, that looks great.

All right, now it's up to you to decide what you like on your pizza.

So at this point, I think we're doing tomato sauce today.

Yeah.

But if you like to put basil pesto or, last Saturday I made a pizza with Buffalo sauce and chicken, so it was a Buffalo chicken pizza, that was pretty yummy.

Here, I'll give you a big bunch of pizza sauce and you can use the spoon.

There you go, that's a beautiful pizza.

You ready?

Oh, we got to put yours on the thing, hold on.

[inaudible] yet.

Nope, I'm on it.

Here you go.

Thank you.

All right, you're welcome.

So cornstarch.

That's OK. And then we'll learn how to throw it and toss it in the air like the pizza masters.

Hey, mom, I want to do the sauce like almost to the end, right?

You can.

So, that's a good question, you know, where you want to put your sauce?

You can put it anywhere you like, really, because it's your pizza.

But I like to have a little space on the edge to grab the pizza.

For the crust.

Yeah, I like to have a crust that I can grab on to that doesn't have ingredients on it so that my hands don't get messy when I eat, but it's up to you.

If you don't mind messy hands, then put the sauce anywhere you like.

Can I have some of that, please?

You got it.

When I do this and you can use this spoon to spread it out.

How's that sound?

You guys are so very polite today.

Here you go.

All right.

How's that?

I like kind of a little bit of sauce on my pizza, not too much, but it's your pizza, you can do whatever you like.

All right.

And we each have some cheese.

If you would like to, you can do cheese and pepperoni, cheese and pepperoni, or you can just do cheese if you want.

And this is where you use your imagination at home.

You can do Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple, you can do steak and cheese pizza, you could do all veggies and leave the meat out, but I always like to put cheese on my pizza no matter what.

And I experiment with different kinds, when I made the Buffalo chicken pizza this weekend-- That was yummy.

That was yummy.

I used kind of a blend of mozzarella and cheddar cheeses.

I would have put blue cheese on, but I'm not sure everybody in my house would have liked that, but I like blue cheese.

Sometimes I use the mozzarella balls and they melt into the pizza and they're really awesome that way.

We did one of those on Saturday night too.

I used olives on a Mediterranean pizza on Saturday night, olives and artichokes and roasted red peppers.

So really the sky's the limit, think about what you love.

Oh, sometimes we used to make meatball pizza, because we love meatballs.

When you were little, I haven't made those in a long time.

You don't remember?

We should definitely make one of those again.

I think you were pretty small.

You can make mini meatballs and make a meatball pizza, it's fun.

Anyway think of what you like and turn it into a pizza and I think you'll be pretty happy.

So, how's your pizza looking?

Pretty good.

I think so.

Put your cheese on.

I put some pepperoni on.

Got some nice calcium in here for us.

Oh, that's a lot of pepperoni, I like it.

Nice.

I have to put more pepperoni on too.

All right, that's cool.

I'm going to put kind of a light amount of pepperoni.

And then I'm going to want to do some spices.

If you have some dried spices hanging around at home like oregano and basil, those are always yummy on a pizza.

Here's some oregano.

These are just dried and at the end I'm probably going to use some of this fresh basil because I really love fresh basil on pizza.

You want some dried spices?

You want oregano and basil?

Sure.

OK, here you go.

My pizza is looking pretty good.

Yeah, just sprinkle it on, go for it.

However much you want.

I'll use yours.

That's plenty for me.

And I think I want to do a little bit of salt too, just a little bit.

All right.

You want some salt?

Yeah, I'll take some.

All right, you want to do your own or you good?

No, you're good.

Your hands are too messy.

All right.

Here's our finished pizza, ready to go in the oven, but we already made one for you to look at so I'm going to pull that out of the oven so you can take a peek.

You guys hold on to those just there for a minute.

I'm going to pull out the finished product that we already made because we're hungry.

How's that look?

That looks good.

You hungry?

Is that what this is going to look like?

Yes, it is, good question.

Yes, it is.

And except that I put fresh basil on this pizza and I'm going to put some on yours too.

OK. Sound good?

Yeah.

Yeah?

You hungry?

We should cut this up and eat it, I think.

Yes, we should.

You good?

Yeah.

You have any questions?

No.

See how easy it is to make fun, healthy, delicious pizza at home?

I hope you all make this pizza and I hope you make it forever and that you love it.

And I hope you'll come back and see us again for our next cooking segment where maybe you learn how to make some meatballs or tortillas or something else delicious right here on PBS.

Thank you.

Support for Amy LaBelle's Cooking with Kids is provided by AutoFair, Cook Little Rosenblatt and Manson, D.F.

Richard Energy, Granite State Development Corporation, New England Dairy, Northeast Delta Dental, Stonyfield Organic, Unitil, Enterprise Bank, White Mountains Community College, Monadnock Food Co-op, Macaroni Kids Seko's, and viewers like you.

Thank you.