pizza experimentations

A few weeks ago I finally got around to implementing a policy I've been pondering for years: Taking a quarterly inventory of everything in my pantry and using it up. This seems like a straightforward idea but once you put it in to implementation it's actually quite an interesting challenge, because one ends up with the oddest things in one's pantry sometimes.

One of the less odd items was a jar of pizza sauce. So I dug out my old pizza stone, acquired a round pizza pan, and decided to have at. Now, I've posted a dough recipe before, but that one always came out a little fluffier than I'd like. Good when you're making long rectangular pizza that never leaves the cookie sheet, but not ideal for my purposes. So I dug up this one, which seemed ideal for my thin-crust desire (to say nothing of my impatience with dough rising in general).

The first attempt was a wet messy flop. The middle was undercooked and ripped and there was schmutz all over my pizza stone and blah. So I whined on Facebook and got some excellent advice from the always-awesome Hanne, who suggested par-baking and a much hotter oven. So I tried a ten-minute par-bake in a 500° oven, and while I won't claim perfection, the results were a lot better than I've ever gotten before. So, without further ado:

Basic Pizza Dough
1 pkg yeast
1 c warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
2 c flour
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

Give yeast & water ten minutes, add to other ingredients. Mix until dough forms, let rise 30 minutes, knead on floured board until you're bored with it.

Now, the recipe wants bread dough. I didn't have any, and I can't seem to find this pure wheat gluten that you can supposedly add to all-purpose dough to make bread dough, so I just went with it. I don't know if this is a factor in this next note, but: This dough was really wet after rising. I used a lot of flour on the board. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but hey.

Anyway, at this point you'll want a lot of cornmeal on your pizza pan, then spread the dough out, poke it with a fork a few dozen times, and bake 10ish minutes at 500. Bring it out, apply olive oil all over, then some minced garlic, then your sauce, mozzarella, and toppings. (Last night I went for chicken, cheddar, and bell pepper. Previously I've used meatball and broccoli. I was pleased with both.)

Bake for a few minutes until the cheese starts to melt, then cover your pizza stone in more cornmeal and slide the pizza from the pan to the stone. Give it another few minutes, and boom. Quality 'zza.

Finally, a note on pizza pans: I know one is not supposed to slice one's pizza on the metal pan because wah wah wah calamity. But my pizza pan cost $3. And the pizza cutter didn't even scratch it. And even if it had, my pizza pan cost three dollars. I consider the convenience worth the risk.

For the future: Experimentation with better dough recipes (several were provided by my friends) and eventually, on to deep dish.

chicken & onion pizza

Yesterday we had some really wonderfully good roast chicken for dinner. Of course, now we have heaps of leftover chicken that we have to find uses for. Tonight, I decided to try out yumsugar's chicken & onion pizza idea.

Of course, from there I had to find a recipe for pizza dough. I wound up settling on this one from Fabulous Foods, which I will document here for my own purposes: Pour 1 cup warm water in bowl. Add 2 tablespoons honey, 1/2 teaspoon salt, then mix. Add 1 packet yeast and mix. Wait 5 minutes. Add 1 cup flour & 1/4 cup olive oil, and (you guessed it) mix. Then add another 2 and 1/2 cups flour. At that point it should ball; add water or flour 1 tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached. Let rise 45 minutes, then punch. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes and use, or punch and let rise another 60 to 120 minutes depending on timing and patience. (I chose 90 minutes and then use this time.)

This dough was very tasty, and in fact we discussed that this is the recipe I should use if I want to make breadsticks or fried dough anytime soon. It comes out nice and fluffy with a good firm exterior. Due to prior bad experiences in this area, I was unwilling to try an untested dough recipe directly on the pizza stone the first time through, so I wound up using a large non-stick cookie sheet. This worked well enough, but it had the unfortunate side effect of not really browning the bottom of the crust in a way I would have liked - I will try that next time, since I know how it's going to behave.

Anyway, once the dough was ready and spread out over the sheet, I topped it with salsa, shredded leftover chicken, Cojack and onion. The recipe called for straight Monterey Jack, but I couldn't find it shredded and I was feeling lazy and besides Cojack is my go-to cheese anyway. It also wants one to sauté the onion before use as topping, probably to distinguish it from whatever onions one might find in the salsa, but I bought a nice big sweet onion and I wanted to taste it, so I didn't bother. It should be noted that I used a mild salsa because while I like spice, and pizza, I don't generally enjoy the two combined.

The end result in this case was very tasty. Between the fluffiness of the crust and the behavior of the salsa it could have been a little dryer, but I wouldn't say it was any soggier than your average extra-sauce pie. We did wind up dipping it in some spaghetti sauce we had in the cabinet, because we wanted a splash of tomato - next time I might just put some sliced tomato on under the cheese. All told an excellent use of leftover chicken, and one I definitely plan to use again.