Daring Bakers~October Challenge~Pizza Dough

October's Daring Baker's Challenge was pizza and toppings! Well the specific challenge was to make the pizza dough and top (with sauce and toppings) at least two pizzas. And the exciting part of the challenge was that we had to toss the dough up in the air during the crust-making process. The pizza and toppings challenge was hosted by Rosa from Rosa's Yummy Yums. I do not remember ever making homemade pizza dough, but Mike reminded me that we had made pizza dough a few years back, but I do not remember it.
The recipe was taken from the "The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread” by Peter Reinhart.

The two pictures above showcase Mike tossing the pizza dough (This is the proof that we tossed the pizza dough in the air).
Since Mike's been doing the baking and cooking at home, he made the dough. Since there was so much dough, we decided to come up with creative topping and sauce combinations. The picture above is the pre-cooked version of the pizza below. This is Mike's first attempt. Alfredo sauce, topped with shrimp scampi, avocado, mushrooms, and Italian cheese.
The pizza below was my pizza. The dough was really soft, and it stretched A LOT, so my pizza was quite large. I decided to put two kinds of toppings on my pizza. On the left side is my "gourmet fruit" pizza, it's caramelized onions, fig, honey, Parmesan cheese, arugula, and "angel food" goat cheese that is similar to brie. The right side of the pizza is a "Farmer's Market Fresh" pizza with homemade chipotle tomato sauce, topped with fresh spinach, garlic slices, mushrooms, and cheese.
Mike's second pizza was a pesto pizza. There was a layer of pesto, topped with grilled chicken, caramelized onions, spinach, and cheese.
Mike thought that this was the best pizza dough he's ever made. The crust was quite crisp (except when I loaded it with too much sauce). We ranked the pizzas, and surprisingly Mike and I had the same ranking. The shrimp pizza was the best, the pesto chicken was the second, the "Farmer's Market Fresh" was third, and the "gourmet fruit" was fourth. I actually really did not like my fig pizza. Mike liked it after he doused it with honey.

All in all, I think that October's Daring Baker's Challenge was a success!