Making pizza from scratch has always been one of those things that I’ve wanted to try but had been pretty intimidated by. This weekend I decided to face my fears and take on this challenge. I got my recipe for pizza crust from The Best New Recipe. I love this cookbook because it explains so much about what to do, what not to do, and what could go wrong and why. The book even includes diagrams showing how to shape the dough! Of course, even with diagrams I managed only one well shaped pizza. The dough was easy with the help of a food processor and stand mixer. The dough rose well in about an hour and a half. The question of sauce had the lazy part of me and the foodie part of me at odds with each other. Do I use jarred sauce for ease, or do I make sauce for better flavor? That question was answered when I checked in The Best New Recipe cookbook and found a super simple sauce that had 5 ingredients, took all of 20 minutes to make and was delicious. My wonderful sister Sarah drove up from College Station for the night to help with the rest.We made three small sized pizzas. The first was chicken sausage, fennel and fontina, then a classic mozzarella, tomato and basil. The finale was fennel, tomato and fontina and was the group favorite.Getting the pizzas from pizza peel to pizza stone in the 500 degree oven was the toughest part and left my right forearm with a nice burn. This process of shaking the pizza off the peel harmed pizza number three the most. The rough transition caused this pizza to look a bit odd…kind of lopsided and ugly. Let’s call it “free form”. Despite the shape of the pizzas, they all turned out delicious. The crust was crisp on the outside and just soft and doughy enough on the inside. The margarita pizza baked on a pizza stone that wasn’t as close to the bottom of the oven, so the crust wasn’t quite as evenly baked. Lesson learned: bake pizzas on the bottom rack. Oh, and you MUST use a pizza stone. I will definitely be making pizza again.