Conquering Homemade Pizza

I feel triumphant in my kitchen this evening. I have conquered a major nemesis: homemade pizza.
Loyal blog viewers will remember my first post was about trying to make a pizza at home with very mixed results, although at least better than some of my previous trials in which the pizza never made it to our plates. This time, I faced my fear of the pizza stone and I'm never looking back! Here's how I did it.

First, I set my oven to 475 and waited for it to actually beep at me when it came up to temperature (sometimes with other things I have cheated when impatient.)
I used Trader Joe's Garlic and Herb dough for the crust. (Ok, so this part wasn't homemade. Maybe that will be my next adventure.) I should have read the package that says to leave it out of the fridge for 20 minutes before handling... whoops... but since I made two smaller pizzas with it (a method to help me control getting the pizza off and on the stone), by the second one, the dough was much easier to work with. I'll know better next time.
I assembled the pizza on the pizza peel, which was dusted with corn meal before placing the crust on it. This helps the dough slide off the peel, and also adds just a bit of texture to the finished crust bottom as well. I checked my ability to slide the crust around on the peel a bit before adding the toppings.
For the sauce, I used an 8 ounce can of plain tomato sauce and added a good pinch of sugar and kosher salt, plus dried basil and oregano. For toppings I used some onion and chicken sausage.
The result was fantastic. It had a very crispy crust on the bottom, but still chewy around the edges and was not at all greasy. Our local pizza joint may have just lost some business.