Creative pizza project:
You can't eat it, but you'll have lots of fun making shape pizza !

Pizza Shapes you can eat & enjoy:
No one ever said that pizza had to be round, square or rectangular. Try shaping pizza dough into a heart, star, the number that is your child's age or the first letter of your child's favorite word! Kids and grown-ups can enjoy pizza delicious pizza that looks like art!  For another idea on decorating pizza, try our tips for Earth Shaped Pizza!

You can often buy ready made pizza dough at the grocery store in the frozen food aisle, and some pizza restaurants will sell you dough at a very reasonable cost. Try making your own recipe (basic ingredients are yeast, flour, water, sugar, oil and toppings), or try the recipe below, highly recommended by a friend.

If you don't have a bread machine, you can try the same ingredients, just mix them together in a bowl until you form a rough ball, then knead on a lightly floured board and set to rest in a warm place so the yeast can rise. After the dough has risen, you'll need to punch the dough down and shape it.

Recommended Bread Machine Recipe:
This recipe has proven tried & true from Laura in Massachusetts. She credits: Bread Machine Baking by Lora Brady and Millie Apter (William Morrow and Co., NY, 1993). Laura uses a DAK/Welbilt bread machine.

Ingredients: 1 tablespoon yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 cup cornmeal, 3 tablespoons whole wheat flour, 3 cups white flour, 1 1/2 cup water (plus an additional 1 or 2 tablespoons if the mixture is too crumbly after the first 10 minutes of kneading), 2 tablespoons olive oil.

Directions: start with all ingredients at room temperature. Place in the machine, program for dough and press start. Remove the dough and let set for ten minutes at room temperature. Recipe makes 2 pizzas. Add your toppings and bake at 450 degrees for about 14 minutes (watch for the cheese to melt).

Laura's bonus tips: We prefer to make the shape on a cutting board sprinkled with corn meal and then move it to a preheated pizza stone before decorating. With kids, though, I would make the dough shape and decorate on a cookie sheet (sprinkling with corn meal will make taking it off easier).

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