How does one make pizza crust? In particular, where do I get the yeast? Do I have to go to a beer brewing store or something? Never bought yeast. Thanks!
There are basically two types of dough you can make:
1. Kneaded dough
2. No-knead dough
You can either knead the dough yourself (by hand, with a mixer, or with a food processor) or let the dough knead itself (better flavor & no tools needed - just your hands - but takes more time). If you do a lot of prep at home & don't mind planning ahead, no-knead dough only takes a minute to make:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/03/jim-laheys-no-knead-pizza-dough-recipe.html
The basic idea is that you mix together (with your hands in a bowl if you want, super easy) the base ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) & then let it rise for 18 hours. The yeast basically kneads itself during this time & will pretty much double in size by itself. Lately I've been liking a variation of it that I call low-knead dough...it's the same basic idea as no-knead, but you do some light kneading for a few minutes to remove clumps:
http://www.bakingsteel.com/blog/72-hour-pizza-dough
You let it rise for 24 hours, then let it ferment in the fridge for 48 hours. So 3 days total. At this point, you can either cook it or throw it in the freezer for future use. No-knead is nice because it's not picky on flour (you can use all-purpose or bread flour).
There are a million recipes for kneaded dough. One of my favorites is food processor pizza dough:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/07/basic-new-york-style-pizza-dough.html
It's more of a low-knead dough too, since you only run it in the food processor for maybe a minute, but then you stick it in the fridge to ferment. The nice thing about this particular dough is that you can use it in one day or five days (plus you can freeze it at the 3-day mark if you want to get even lazier, haha). The catch is that you need to wait at least one day before using it, and it needs to be left at room temp for 2 hours before baking it. So it kind of depends on if you want pizza right now or tomorrow or later in the week. A lot of these doughs can be re-purposed as well...you can make calzones, breadsticks, etc.
Yeast is what makes stuff with flour poof up, otherwise you get flatbread. As far as types of yeast goes, there are basically two kinds: regular & instant. Regular is called "active dry yeast" and instant is called "bread machine yeast" (or rapid-rise, or quick-rise yeast). The grocery store usually sells a small brown glass jar or packets of it (Red Star is a good brand, they are typically found next to the eggs in the refrigerated section); if you want to order it online, Amazon sells SAF instant yeast in 1-pound packs for under ten bucks. You can store them in your fridge, or if you don't use yeast that often, in the freezer (freezer is easy if you have an airtight container, makes it last longer). There's not really a huge difference between the two, other than instant yeast works a little faster, but it really depends on the recipe (some recipes double in size in like 20 minutes instead of 2 hours, some are much less, just depends on what you're making...bread, pizza, rolls, etc.). SAF in particular advertises that you can use it in place of active dry yeast & don't need to proof it or activate it in warm water, just mix with dry ingredients, and a huge amount is like eight bucks shipped, so I'd just go with that if you're not in a rush.
The two primary things you need to make great pizza at home are high temperatures & a good cooking surface. High temps are the hardest. It's best to have something that goes between 700 to 900F, but most people don't have that. An oven that gets up to 550F is the next best thing, but not many ovens do that either. There are some tricks you can do with your oven to amp up the temp like leaving the door slightly ajar, using the broiler, etc. It's also helpful to have a good cooking surface, like a pizza stone, cast iron, or a baking steel. Before getting into all of that, however, I'd start out with pan pizza. This is like Pizza Hut, back when they were good in the 80's & 90's:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/01/foolproof-pan-pizza-recipe.html
Easiest way to do this is to make the no-knead dough, let it sit overnight to poof up, split it into two dough balls, and then cook it in the oven. This is one of my family's favorite recipes. Super easy to make! Oh, and one thing I do recommend buying is a small kitchen scale for weighing grams, for accuracy. You can find good ones for under twenty bucks on Amazon.
I've spent the last year or so tinkering with homemade pizza. There is a ton of stuff to try out: different dough methods, pizza sauces (canned, bottled, and homemade), types of cheese, methods of cooking, etc. We typically do red pizza (regular pizza sauce), white pizza (like a ricotta-based pizza), or naked pizza (olive oil, with toppings, almost like focaccia bread). You can make it in your oven, on your grill, on a special pizza grill (like the PizzaQue or Blackstone), make a homemade pizza oven (out of brick or cob)...there's a million ways to do it.
Especially with stuff like the 5-day food processor dough above, it's easy enough to keep cook it up a few times a week once you get into a routine...spend a minute mixing up a couple of batches Sunday night, then make pizza on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Take the dough out of the fridge right when you get home from work or school, let it get to room temp for a couple hours, then bake it. Pepperoni & cheese, moz & basil, Chinese chicken pizza, the possibilities are endless!