Pizza: better, faster, stronger

I've posted about pizza dough here and here before. Not to mention various pizza topping combinations. But none of the pizza doughs were quite right.

So I decided to try this no-knead pizza dough recipe. I also decided to try cooking the pizza the "real" way, as opposed to the easy way. "Real" way: put the pizza stone in the oven first, and get it blisteringly hot. Slide the prepared pizza onto it. "Easy" way: assemble the pizza on the pizza stone. Cook. The real way gets you a slightly charred, slightly blistered, more authentic crust, but you also have to deal with sliding a pizza heavy with toppings into a 500-degree oven and not making a huge f*&%ing mess. I usually end up making a huge f*&%ing mess, which is why I always assembled it directly on the stone. Takes longer to cook, and you get a doughy crust as opposed to a crisp, crackling one, but also no huge f*&%ing mess.

Step 1: Heat up the pizza stone, in a 500-degree oven, while prepping the first pizza.
Step 2: Disable your smoke alarm by beating it to death with a broom handle.
Step 3: Turn on the vent above the stove, and continue pre-heating the pizza stone.
Step 4: Get a rimless baking sheet really, really covered with flour. Set the pizza on it, near the edge, and give it a couple of quick jerks to make sure the pizza will slide off. Put the toppings on the pizza (gently.) (If you don't have a pizza stone, a cast-iron skillet can work. You don't need a pizza peel if you have a rimless baking sheet.)
Step 5: Once the pizza stone is searing hot, slide the prepped pizza onto it with a couple of quick jerks. Turn the light in the oven on, and watch for blackened bits. When the pizza crust is sufficiently browned, remove the pizza.
Step 6: Reheat the pizza stone for 5 minutes, and continue with pizza making.

I figured, since the oven was on, I would just use up all four pizza dough balls, make a bunch of pizza, and reheat as needed.

Conclusion: You really do gotta use the broiler, as it says in the original recipe. Otherwise you get a delicious, but doughy and floury crust. I don't mind doughy, but all the flour on the bottom was a little much. Next time I will try cornmeal instead of flour, to see if the pizza will slide off still without the flour.

Also, delicious dough. Pizza-making at home is invariably a little time-consuming; if it's not the crust, it's the cooking process as above. This method takes all the time and energy out of crust-making, and puts it squarely in the cooking process. But that's okay--you can make a whole bunch at once. And it still tastes way better than either frozen or delivery pizza.

Also, prep the pizza on the baking sheet at the last possible minute. The longer it sits on the baking sheet, the more it will want to stay there and not slide right off onto the stone.

Today's pizzas: fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, fresh basil. Yum.

French bread pizza

You wouldn't know yesterday was Day 1 of $0 grocery spending. We ate very well, thanks primarily to work leftovers.

French bread pizza with prosciutto for lunch, then crab cakes with fava beans and rhubarb tarts for dinner. All with ingredients that I scavenged from work.

I'll start with the French bread pizza. I've talked about getting free stale bread from work before, and usually it's all rolls. But sometimes there are long, skinny baguettes as well, that we serve with the cheese plate. I took one of those baguettes, along with some rolls, and cut it in half both ways. (Down the middle, then across, so I had four long, skinny halves.)

On each piece of bread, I layered a thin smear of ricotta, a smear of tomato sauce, and a few thin slices of prosciutto. In the oven at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or so, just until the prosciutto starts to turn up at the ends.

An excellent use of both stale bread and ricotta that was about to go bad.

Mushroom and prosciutto pizza

I had some button mushrooms that were starting to look a little shriveled, so I used them to make a mushroom and prosciutto pizza.

Mushroom storage tip: don't store them in plastic. Plastic makes mushrooms slimy. Take them out of the plastic as soon as you get them home, and put them in a brown paper bag. They'll last for weeks that way (although they'll start to look a little shriveled after a while).

I sliced the mushrooms and browned them in a little in some butter. I used half on a spinach salad, and the other half on a pizza.

This pizza crust + tomato sauce + a smear of ricotta + cooked mushrooms + a few pieces of prosciutto, torn into bits + healthy sprinkle of parmesan + dried basil (in that order); bake at 475 for 15 minutes.

Pizza with fresh mozzarella and roasted red peppers

Sometimes homemade pizza is just, you know, average. But when it's really good--it's really, really good.

This is one of those really good pizzas.

This pizza crust + this tomato sauce + rounds of fresh mozzarella + roasted red peppers (I used the kind out of a jar) + grated parmesan on top (in that order). Bake on a pizza stone at 475 until the cheese is melty and browned. Makes one medium-size pizza, which will feed two adults.

Calzones!

Sometimes you're just not feeling pizza, you know?

I had some pizza dough ready to go last night, but for whatever reason, I wasn't excited about pizza. Then, suddenly I thought: calzones! I haven't had calzones in forever! They're basically folded-over pizza pockets!

I used this pizza dough recipe, which can be a little sticky, so use plenty of flour to roll it out, and put a piece of parchment paper on your baking sheet. Also, if you divide the dough into four pieces, each fourth will be enough to make four decent-sized calzones. (So if you want more, use more sections of dough.)

Pizza dough
3/4 cup ricotta
Handful of greens (spinach works well; I used carrot greens and parsley), well chopped
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1/4 cup shredded parmesan

Divide the dough and roll out into thin circles. Mix the ricotta and other ingredients well, and place a scoop of filling in the middle of the dough circle. Fold it over and bring up the opposite edge, to seal it tight. Place on a baking sheet. Cut vents into the top of each, and brush with a little olive oil to give it that nice brown color. Bake at 450 for 25-30 minutes, or until browned on top. Serve with tomato sauce.

Skillet pizza

Did you know you can make pizza on the stovetop, in a cast-iron skillet?

This is news to me, too. Glorious news! Now, as long as you have some pizza dough handy, you can make a personal-size pizza in minutes, without pizza stones or hot ovens or shaping dough.

Warning: you will have to watch the dough while it's cooking in the hot pan. It's VERY easy for it to blacken and burn. Although, my first effort burned twice (once on each side), and it was still tasty. So it's not the end of the world if it does burn.

Get a cast-iron skillet hot, over medium heat, and sprinkle some cornmeal in it. Lay a round of pizza dough in the bottom (you won't need much). Cook, shaking occasionally, over medium-low heat until the dough is crispy and golden. If it starts to burn/scorch, flip it over.

Then add toppings. I added cooked bacon, clams, some mustard greens, and parmesan. Let cook another few minutes, until the cheese is melted, and then just slide the finished product onto a plate and eat.

Pizza with fennel pesto and fresh mozzarella

Ya know, the taste of the fennel pesto got lost almost entirely. It was still identifiably green, just not fennel-y. Oh well. It's not like a pizza with fresh mozzarella could be bad.

Pizza crust, fennel pesto, fresh mozzarella, handful of grated parm. Done.

Ratatouille pizza with sun-dried tomato pesto

Isn't that gorgeous?

I layered yesterday's sun-dried tomato pesto over this pizza crust with thin eggplant and zucchini slices. In the middle I put half a ball of fresh mozzarella. I sprinkled the whole thing with parmesan, and added a little chopped fresh sage when it was done.

Super-delicious, super-healthy, I will warn you this is best fresh out of the oven (microwaved eggplant does lose some of its appeal).

Garlic scape pizza

Garlic scapes are the curly top of the garlic plant, available only a few weeks a year as the garlic ripens. I was fortunate enough to get a bag in my CSA box last week. They taste like a milder, greener (green as in salad) version of garlic. And they look like a vegetable version of bend-y straws, which is fun.

For the pizza, I laid down slices of fresh mozzarella and the unused bits from yesterday's tart--a few tablespoons of caramelized onion and a few leaves of wilted chard. Topped that with the garlic scapes, and a layer of parmesan. When it came out of the oven, I garnished with the torn first basil leaves from my garden.

Hooray! I'm finally getting basil!

Fiddlehead pizza

Another previously undiscovered culinary delight, thanks to my CSA box. In pizza form.

This one was very easy to pull together. I sauteed the fiddleheads for just a minute in olive oil with garlic and then a splash of white wine at the end. Then I sauteed one sliced Vidalia onion (grilling it would have been better) and layered the pizza with olive oil, mozzarella, onions, fiddleheads, a mixture of parm and mozzarella, and a sprinkle of Italian herbs on top.

Fiddleheads taste a little like asparagus, so they go very well with cheese and bread.

Doesn't that look yummy?

Spinach and taleggio pizza

Ooooooh, this was a good pizza. Taleggio is a kind of Italian stinky cheese; I had a little bit left over from a run to the fancy cheese store, but it was a bit past its prime to eat by itself.

So I started by putting down olive oil, then slices of the taleggio (maybe 1/4 lb). I followed up with a package of thawed frozen chopped spinach, with all the water squeezed out, and the very last of the chicken andouille sausage, maybe half a sausage's worth. Topped it all with mozzarella and parm.

The relative bitterness of the spinach offset the richness of the cheese perfectly. I should have made two.

Carrot pizza, Thai-style

This is an interesting pizza. "Interesting" in the sense that it's good; but I found myself missing the cheese. However, it's a great vegan dish, it's low-calorie and light, and would make a great appetizer as well.

It's basically pureed cooked carrots, with Sriracha, coconut milk, and fresh herbs. I cooked, then pureed, the carrots. On the pizza crust, I spread a little olive oil, then the carrot puree, and cooked it like I would a regular pizza. While it was cooking, I opened a can of coconut milk and set it to boil, to reduce it by about half (coconut cream would also work, without the reducing).

When it came out of the oven, I added a fair amount of Sriracha, and drizzled the coconut milk over that (maybe 1/3 cup of each) and topped with chopped fresh cilantro and mint.

New pizza crust recipe!

I have a new pizza crust recipe!

Lately my pizza crusts have been more bread than crust. That is to say, thick and chewy and delicious, but not really, you know, thin and crackly like pizza crust. I wanted to get back to the thin and crackly end of the spectrum.

So I tried out this recipe from the New York Times:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups bread flour
3/4 teaspoon yeast
2 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

To be made the day before cooking (or at least the morning of).

Using a hand whisk, combine flours, yeast and salt in the bowl of your KitchenAid. Switch to a wooden spoon and stir in 1 1/2 cups cold water and olive oil until a rough dough forms. Using the paddle attachment, mix on low for 1 minute. Increase to high and beat for 4-6 minutes.

Pour onto well-floured surface, fold over, and let rest for 10 minutes. Cut into two pieces, shape each into a ball. Place each ball on a well-oiled plate, dust with flour, and loosely cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled in size, at least 3 hours. Shape into rounds and place each in a Ziploc bag. Refrigerate between 1 and 24 hours. Makes 2 balls (which make 1 pizza each).

Notes: This recipe makes an EXCEPTIONALLY sticky dough. Don't be tempted to add more flour.

Using a rolling pin to roll the dough out, with more flour, works best. It's a very elastic dough, so you won't get a very big (or square) crust.

I heated my oven as high as it would go (500, though 550 would have been better) and let the pizza stone blaze away in there for a good 45 minutes. I tried several methods of getting the pizza onto the hot pizza stone--using a pizza peel, making the pizza directly on the stone, a combination of the two--but because this is such a sticky and elastic dough, you'll have a very hard time transferring it easily from the peel to the stone.

I ended up with several strangely-shaped (but delicious) pizzas as a result.

So I recommend rolling the crust out, prepping all the toppings, then taking the hot pizza stone out of the oven, dropping the rolled-out crust on top, and VERY CAREFULLY adding all the toppings before popping it back in the oven for 10 minutes. (You'll want to add the toppings with a quick and light hand, as well, to avoid pressing it down unnecessarily.)

What you'll get is a light, thin, crackly, delicious pizza.

I made two kinds: cheese, and one with andouille sausage and red peppers. Both delish.

Mushroom and broccoli pizza

Someone asked me recently if there's anything I won't consider as a pizza topping.

So far, no.

But it's helpful to think of "pizza toppings" not so much as "toppings," but more "things that go well with bread and cheese."

And as we all know, there is very little in this world that doesn't go with cheese.

Sushi, maybe.

Anyway, when thinking about pizza, don't get hung up on pepperoni, etc. Use a pizza crust as a repository for leftovers/whatever you have on hand, cover it with cheese, and see what happens.

Which is what I did with this pizza: I had two big portobello mushroom caps and one big head of broccoli. Add cheese and voila.

In order:

pizza crust
drizzle of olive oil
ricotta cheese
two sliced portobello mushrooms, or the equivalent amount of some other kind of mushroom
one big head of broccoli, florets sliced lengthwise (no need to cook the broccoli; just add it raw and it will roast)
shredded parmesan
Italian seasoning

Bake at 475 for 15-20 minutes.

Butternut squash and black bean pizza

Looks kinda like a Jackson Pollack painting, doesn't it? Eat your art!

Remember those butternut squash pockets? Well, I had some butternut squash goop left over after making them. I also had some leftover black beans in the refrigerator. So I made a pizza out of them.

pizza crust
butternut squash, roasted and chopped
black beans
sliced peppers
feta cheese

Also would have been good on this pizza:

caramelized onions
goat cheese
parmesan cheese
salsa

Layer as you see fit. Bake at 475 for 15-20 minutes.

Hummus pizza




If you leave the feta cheese off, you can turn this into a great vegan pizza.

1 pizza crust
Hummus
Possible toppings: sliced peppers, olives, sundried tomatoes, red onion, garlic
Feta cheese
Fresh spinach

On the pizza crust, spread the hummus out. Top with whatever hummus-friendly toppings you prefer (I used sliced peppers and black olives), plus crumbled feta cheese. Bake at 475 for 15 minutes or so. Top with fresh spinach and serve.

Red cabbage, caramelized onion, and goat cheese pizza

Because Valentine's Day is right around the corner, I'm going to be featuring pretty red foods this weekend. Starting with this red cabbage pizza. (Which, okay, is really more purple than red, but it's still a gorgeous color.)

I know you're thinking, "Cabbage on pizza? Really?" But this was really good. Not cabbagey at all. And healthy, despite all the cheese!

On a whole-wheat pizza crust, I layered:
olive oil
ricotta
caramelized onions
a handful of gorgonzola (optional)
a handful of mozzarella (optional)
one whole gently sauteed chopped red cabbage
lots of goat cheese

...and baked at 475 until the crust was done.

To caramelize onions, slice two thinly and let them cook down on medium-low for a long time, at least 45 minutes. They'll turn a dark brown, and get very sweet. To saute the cabbage, chop in half, remove the stem, slice thinly, and add to a hot pan with a little olive oil. Just for a few minutes, just enough time for the cabbage to start to get soft. Any more than that, and it will start to lose its pretty color.

Pizza with truffle oil and fresh mozzarella, redux

Okay, this is what that truffle oil pizza was supposed to taste like. I used fresh yeast in the dough, so it was super-risey, and bought a new fresh bottle of truffle oil. I layered on:

truffle oil
fresh mozzarella
cilantro pesto
fresh arugula
good salt and pepper
homemade dried basil
good shredded Parmesan

And man, that was a good pizza. The cilantro pesto was perfect with the truffle oil and fresh mozzarella.

Pizza with truffle oil, mushrooms and fresh mozzarella

Before I tell you the story, let me just say this was still an exceptional pizza.

Here's the moral of the story: truffle oil eventually loses its truffle smell.

Yesterday, I was searching for pizza inspiration. I wanted to use some of the fresh bufalo mozzarella I found at Costco. I also had some baby portobello mushrooms and a handful of spinach. Then I saw the tiny bottle of truffle oil, and I thought YES. TRUFFLE OIL.

When I opened it, it smelled like regular vegetable oil, gone slightly sour.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, I thought. All the nice truffle smell has evaporated. Apparently it pays to pay attention to the expiration date.

Well, no matter. I used it anyway, but fresh truffle oil would have been so much nicer. I poured what was left into my jug of olive oil and swished it around to mix it in. It's still oil, even if it isn't so truffley anymore.

So, truffle oil pizza:

1 pizza crust
A few tablespoons of truffle oil
Two balls of fresh bufalo mozzarella, thickly sliced
Two handfuls of mushrooms (preferably wild), sliced
A handful of fresh spinach
A scant handful of fresh parmesan, grated

Drizzle the oil over the crust. Gently saute the mushrooms in some butter until browned; throw the spinach in at the last minute and cook together until just wilted. Add both to the pizza. Top with the cheese, good salt, and fresh pepper. Bake at 475 for 15-20 minutes.

Another caveat: the cheese melted all over my oven. Be sure to add a cookie sheet or something under the pizza stone in case this happens to you.

Pizza variation: Roasted beet with wild boar bacon, fresh tomatoes and wilted dandelion greens

It's challenging cooking in a hotel room; I'll blog more about that later.

But the old standbys are serving me well here. Yesterday I made one of them, roasted beet pizza, but because the beets I bought were pretty small, I needed to beef out the pizza a bit. So I added two fresh sliced tomatoes, a handful of cooked wild boar bacon, and a bunch of wilted dandelion greens and the beet greens (cooked in the wild boar bacon grease). Plus the usuals: caramelized onions and lots of fresh parmesan cheese.

Wilted dandelion greens are really good on a pizza.