Sicilian Pizza

Tim makes fun of me a lot for having an authentic Sicilian family and never actually cooking Italian food, so for his last birthday I folded and made my dad's pizza. I'll do my best to give his cooking instructions, which often sound like, "Just a little of this, not too much" with never giving an exact amount.

Ingredients

• Refrigerated pizza dough (you can get this from any quality Italian market - it comes in a bag with just the right amount for one pizza, or you can use frozen bread dough, but you need to let the dough thaw out on your counter overnight after you rub it with some olive oil and cover it with saran wrap, one loaf = one pizza)
• 1 Italian sausage link (since you can use such a small amount, I recommend you go for the good stuff and get a link from the deli, or an Italian market)
• Pizza sauce (again, quality is key here, don't go cheap)
• Grated Romano cheese
• Grated Parmesan cheese
• mushrooms, bell peppers, olives, whatever else you like on your pizza
• sliced green onions, sounds weird, but it's good
• dried oregano

Directions

1. If you're using the refrigerated dough, you need to set the dough out and let it rise and get to room temperature. It won't rise a ton, but it will rise. As my dad says, "You want it to get warm, but not too warm." Basically, you want it at room temp. Leave it out for an hour or so.
2. I make pizza on the Silpat, which I highly recommend. Some people use the pizza stone. The nice thing about the Silpat is it's non-stick, so you'll have to figure out a way to make whatever you're using a non-stick surface. Some olive oil and cornstarch should do the trick on a cookie sheet.
3. Put about a teaspoon of olive oil on the dough to help work it out. I don't roll mine, I just push it out with my fingers. Dad says, "Not too thin, not too thick." If you're using a cookie sheet it will probably go to just about the edges of the sheet. You can make the crust as thick or thin as you want.
   
4. Sprinkle oregano on dough, then press it in. Dad says this is the most important part.
5. Spread a thin layer of pizza sauce over the dough.
   
6. Cut the skin off of the sausage and put very small pieces of sausage all over the dough. Make sure the pieces are small so they'll cook through.
7. Add your toppings however you want. The cheeses are probably the most important, you can just do parmesan but I like the Romano as well.
8. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

I probably made it sound more complicated then necessary, but once you get it down it's super quick and tasty. One pizza serves about 3 people, if we're being realistic.