When it seems like there's nothing to eat in the house, you can pull together something really fun and filling using some flour, yeast and whatever you've got on hand. You can do anything you want, just as long as you don't ever refer to it as "'za" around me- for some reason that grates on my last nerve like gravel on a sharpening stone.
We've made pesto pizza when we didn't have cheese, done a "Mexican" style pizza with leftover grilled chicken, stewed tomatoes with lime and garlic topped with some cheddar and jack, and I know there's a hotdog pizza that's popular in Germany that I haven't tried because my history with 'dogs has been a rocky one. Another time recently, I was too lazy to make tomato sauce and just layered fresh tomatoes with salt and pepper over an olive oil brushed pie, topped with mozzarella and basil. Yum!
The dough:
1 package active dry yeast
1 1/2 c. warm water (105 degrees)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. salt
4 c. all purpose flour
Stand Mixer:
In the bottom of mixing bowl, put warm water and sprinkle in yeast, let stand 10 minutes. Add oil and stir with finger. Add flour and salt then knead with dough hook attachment for 2 minutes on low, then 10 minutes on medium, then rest for 5 minutes, then mix 10 minutes more.
Let rise overnight in the refrigerator covered in an oiled bowl.
By hand:
Sprinkle yeast into measuring cup with warm water, let stand for 10 minutes, add oil. Combine salt and half of flour in a large bowl. Add liquid and use wooden spoon to combine.Add remaining flour and stir until cohesive mass forms. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. If you've not kneaded by hand before, you lightly roll the dough towards you and push away with the heel of your palm over and over. Try not to put too much pressure on the dough and it will thank you later. Form into a ball and let rise overnight in covered, oiled bowl.
Now you can roll out the dough into a circle with a rolling pin or practice hand tossing it. I recommend the latter. It's fun when you get it down so just keep practicing with any extra pieces of dough that are left. Eventually, I'd like to get to a place on this blog where I can upload my own video demos, for now I suggest heading over to YouTube with a search for hand tossed pizza dough.
You'll be baking your pizza in the hottest oven you can at home, that's typically about 500 degrees in a conventional oven. We began to suspect that we made enough pizzas this summer to raise our power bill and actually tried grilling them on a pizza stone outside over the charcoal grill with the lid pulled down. It kind of worked...but needs tweaking. More on that later!
i worked in a spanish joint in a'ville run by a nice puerto riqueno. we made little pizzas he called "galletas", i think it translated roughly to "cookie" he had a great friend that once commented that he butchered both english and spanish, so there you go. but we experimented with lots of different dough recipes before opening, and settled eventually on a straight up baguette dough. pretty close to the one you posted, but with no oil. try it sometime, but the one with the oil was good too, we just eliminated a step, and a fraction of the cost, and we got a nice crispy result. great shot KT : )
ReplyDelete-ac
Confession: I am not too cool to let my bread machine do the work here. Using pretty much the same dough recipe, I just toss all of the ingredients in the hopper and put it on the "dough" setting. Its all-knowing electronic brain mixes, incubates, and lets it rise for a predetermined period of time before punching it down and letting it rest. I still get that therapeutic "hands-in-the-dough" time when it's ready to be tossed and panned up...just shaves a few minutes off of prep and cleanup that could be better spent drinking.
ReplyDeletegood tip on the bread machine. i have never used one so i didn't know you could use it with the same recipes. many recipes for pizza dough are similar to this one, though some use sugar or malt to activate the yeast. my favorite thing is that it rises overnight in the fridge, breaking it down into time-manageable steps. i just really hate waiting for dough to rise sometimes.
ReplyDeletewe're growing arugula right now- a spicy arugula and horseradish pizza doesn't suck.