Give yourself 30 minutes to let the pizza dough rest before baking. You can also let it sit all day if that works better for your schedule. I tend to make the dough in the morning quick, or when I have a minute before I pick kids up from school sometime in the afternoon, but you can also make the dough, let it rest for 30 minutes and then bake.

To make the dough, first wake up the yeast by mixing the warm water, cane sugar, and yeast in a pyrex measuring cup. Set this mixture aside while you put the rest of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl. This will give the yeast time to “wake up” – it will get foamy at the top and smell yeasty if it is good yeast. See the picture above to see what it should look like.

Mix the water/sugar/yeast mixture into the mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients until everything is combined. Put a lid on the bowl, or cover it with a towel. Let the dough rest at least 30 minutes, or up to all day if you need to make it in the morning. The dough will get bigger in size after resting (see the pictures above)

Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees, and put the oven rack on the lowest spot it can go.

Line one or two pizza pans with parchment paper. 1 pan will yield a large, 14-inch pizza. Or you can make two 10-inch pizzas.

If you are doing 2 pizzas, divide the dough in half, and scoop the dough onto the middle of the parchment paper on the pizza pans. If you are doing 1 pizza, scoop all of the dough onto the middle of the parchment paper.

Next, you’ll form the crust into the shape you want. To keep the dough from sticking to your hands, pour a good palm-full of olive oil in your hand, and rub into both hands. Form the dough into a circle. It will seem like a lot of oil on your hands, but trust me, this is ok! And even good! It crisps up the dough and makes it so flavorful.

Once you have formed your pizza crust into the shape you want, sprinkle sea salt and garlic all over the crust, making sure that the edges of the crust where the toppings don’t go get the most so that the edge of the crust is super yummy and flavorful.

Put your toppings on the par-baked pizza crust and bake at 450 degrees for another 10 to 15 minutes to the done-ness that you like.