I had a hankering fro some chewy bread like substance tonight so I whipped up some of my 5-minute bread dough using 2 cups whole wheat flour and 4.5 cups of all purpose flour. I was thinking of the Roman pizza bianca which is typically a simple flatbread made with a high hydration dough topped with olive oil, salt and rosemary. I added a few other ingredients to this no-cheese pizza. The dough rose for about 3 hours before I took a hunk of it and stretched it out into a square. I doused the dough liberally with olive oil and topped it with sliced garlic, fresh rosemary, fresh tomatoes and arugula leaves. The whole shebang was sprinkled with kosher salt and baked in a hot hot oven until crisp and bubbly. It really hit the spot.
Kicked up pizza bianca
June 29, 2009 by 8 Comments
Pizza and high water
March 29, 2009 by 6 Comments
Well it has been a tough week of sandbagging in blizzards and watching the mighty Red River of the North rise. But we still have to eat. Saturday we got some good news. The river was starting to go down. We may have reached our crest just under 41 feet which is a foot or two less than they predicted. While many people have already lost so much in the rising waters much of the city of Fargo is holding on by a thread. I had a little time on Saturday to make some pizza. The first is a pesto pizza with summer sausage, olives and asparagus. The second one you see is a pepperoni pizza with asparagus.
This morning I was interviewed by Susan Hendricks from CNN’s Headline News about the flooding in Fargo. I posted some of my photos to CNN’s iReport and they wanted to talk to me. Here’s the video.
I have some new photos of the river and dikes as the river reaches it’s crest near 41 feet.
More Pizza
March 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment
What pizza did we have last Friday? A darn good one. The pie shown above has a standard pizza sauce base topped with diced summer sausage, chopped garlic-stuffed green olives, and sliced pepperoncini peppers. On top of the cheese was some pepperoni slices.
How about something completely different? How about a cheeseless Asian-style pizza. I used hoisin sauce as the base along with some sriracha hot sauce. This proved a sweet and spicy underlay for the ingredients on top. A layer of fresh mung bean sprouts, some sliced leftover Asian meatballs, and fresh pineapple finished off this healthy lowfat pizza.
See how nice it cooked up? The only drawback was the amount of moisture in the pizza. I think that comes largely from the bean sprouts and maybe the pineapple. It was a little bit drippy and hard to eat. But it tasted really good.
Friday Pizza
March 7, 2009 by 3 Comments
Friday’s are Pizza Night in our house. My son has been a just cheese please pizza guy until just recently. He’s now branched out to eating pepperoni. Small steps. Some day I hope he will eat my more robust pies. I’ve been making a lot lately due to having my 5 minute bread dough constantly in the fridge. Like last night’s pizza shown above. This one has a tomato sauce topped with leftover ground beef from tacos, chopped green olives, fresh mushrooms, roasted red peppers and finally sliced cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes were SO sweet when cooked on top of the cheese.
Let me share some of my other recent pizza creations. I have a bit of summer stored in my freezer in the form of delicious homemade pesto. Perfect for pizza! No tomato sauce on this one.
A bit of ham, kalamata lives and roasted red peppers make for toppings that are nice and flavorful.
Look at how nice it cooks up on my oven tiles!
The pizza that follows had a combination of pesto and tomato sauce. A bit of roasted red peppers and topped with pepperoni, this Friday night feast really pleased.
Bread Oven
February 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment
My wife knows I always love to get cooking related gifts. And with all the bread making we’ve been doing lately she went out and got a great gift for my birthday a couple weeks ago. This is something I have been wanting for a long time but haven’t taken the time to go out and get. I’m talking about unglazed quarry tiles to make a bread oven!
These tiles came from a local flooring store in town. It is important to use unglazed tiles to avoid any offgassing of various chemicals used in the glaze during heating. The store even looked up the MSDS (material safety data sheet) on these tiles to make sure there was nothing toxic in them.
Of course I tried out some of our 5 minute bread dough as soon as I could. The tiles worked perfectly!
One of the reasons I wanted the tiles to replace my standard pizza stone was the size. The tile lined oven has enough room to bake more than one loaf at a time. And the pizza stone was too small to bake a large pizza like the one shown here.
Believe it or not, the
Roasted red peppers and kalamata olives were great together.
See how nicely it fits int he oven?
The 5 minute dough makes great pizza crust!
