Family Night – Simple, Easy Pizza Dough
If you hadn’t already noticed, we posted a new video on our YouTube page featuring one of our favorite family activities. You can watch that below:
So, every Friday afternoon I start preparing for our evening by making homemade pizza dough. It took a long time to find a dough we liked, but this one is so easy and delicious to make! I’ll share the recipe at the bottom of this post. Sometimes I split a dough ball into four so that each kid can make their own personal pan pizzas, or like this night, we made one large pizza and the kids all topped their sections. J and I like to make all different types of pizzas, but the kids are pretty simple and prefer just cheese and pepperoni!
When J gets home we make our pizzas, and then we pull out some board games or pick out a movie to watch together. It’s a great way to unwind at the end of the week and spend some quality time with the kids. We chose to split up with the kids and play some age appropriate games with them.
J took the older two (Boogie & Bubby) and played Monopoly Junior (I couldn’t find the exact version to link, but that one is pretty close to our older version). I took the younger two (Bird & Bear) and we played Hoot Owl Hoot! and The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game. Both are super cute – Hoot Owl Hoot! Is a cooperative game where you and your friends have to get all the owls to the next before the sun rises. You have to know your colors to play this game. The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel game is great for fine motor skills as you have to pick up the colored acorns with the Squirrel “tongs” and place them in the spots on your tree trunk. Color identification, counting to 2 are important for this game!
When we all finished up we played a pretty hysterical game of Twister, I think it made J very aware that he is not a limber young man anymore! Ha!
If you don’t already, set some time aside each week for family fun. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but making time to spend together is so important. Our lives get so busy and life is too short to not make time together!
Don’t forget to try out the pizza dough recipe below, and you can click the links to the games in the paragraphs above – they are listed at great prices on Amazon right now!
- ½ Tbsp Active Dry Yeast
- 1 cup water, lukewarm (I heat in the microwave for 1 minute and let cool)
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 cups bread flour
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- In a large bowl combine your lukewarm water, yeast and sugar. Mix until dissolved and allow to bloom for 15-20 minutes.
- Add 1 cup of bread flour and mix until combined.
- Add salt. Mix.
- Add remaining cup of bread flour and mix until combined.
- Dump cup of all purpose flour onto counter (I do this directly on my counter, but you can use a kneading board, a cutting board, or mat). and knead the dough into that until your dough is soft and elastic. You don't want it sticky!
- Wash and dry your bowl, pour olive oil into bottom.
- Coat your dough in the olive oil, cover with a damp towel and allow to sit in a warm place for a minimum of 45 minutes (I let it rise for a full 2 hours).
- Once dough has risen, preheat your oven to 500F.
- Now you can prepare your dough however you wish!
- Cook for 10-15 minutes.
- Enjoy!
