Pizza

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As I have mentioned, a lot of my efforts during the cold months go to coming up with creative ways to use what we have grown. In the case of pizza it went hand in hand with my desire to start a tradition that we could look forward to every week. I thought it would be fun to start a “pizza and movie night”. At first it was because my husband was working at two different jobs and always getting home late on Fridays and it was hard to know when he would be home, let alone to wait for him. It just worked out really well to turn on a movie while we were waiting. Now his schedule is way better but we all still love our tradition of having pizza and watching a movie on Friday. I am hoping this will still be the case when my kids are older, who knows.

Since this has been going on for a while, I have realized that there are several advantages to having the same thing every Friday night. 1) It is one night I don’t have to decide what to make because I have already decided. And when my kids ask “what’s for dinner?” I say, “it’s Friday!” and they know what that means, and are excited about it. It’s great. 2) The more I make it the better I get at making it. (at least the way I like it) 3) When you make something regularly, you can buy the ingredients in bulk which saves money in the long run. and 4) I use the canned tomato sauce that I made from the tomatoes we grew. Which means they are getting used, and I am not spending money on the store bought sauce. (yay!) There is nothing worse than having food expire after you worked so hard to can it.

When it comes to pizza I think the crust is really one of the most important factors. You can have great toppings all day long but if the crust is dry or under done or boring it won’t be a great pizza. On the flip side, if you have a great crust, it almost doesn’t matter what you put on it, sky’s the limit. As long as it’s, you know, not gross. So maybe the sky isn’t the limit, but you know what I mean.

It took me quite a while to find the perfect pizza crust recipe, which became it’s own occupation. I think I tried a different one every couple weeks for a year until my sister in law Becca sent me this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, it changed the way I think of pizza. It actually changed the way I look at yeast bread in general.

I had been using recipes that were trying to take only 30 minutes to make a pizza, which meant that you were adding a lot of yeast to try to speed the proofing process. They mostly worked, the best of those that I found was from Americas Test Kitchen, but that one used a potato so, although it was pretty amazing, it also took a lot of effort. This recipe is the opposite. It is literally called “Lazy Pizza dough” and for good reason. There are four ingredients and you don’t even have to knead it.

I guess the person who writes smitten kitchen went to Italy and noticed that all the pizza restaurants were starting their dough at night for the next day, and why not? The longer yeast dough raises the better it tastes.

In this recipe you start the dough either the night before, the morning of, or the afternoon of the day you are going to use it. This was perfect for me because I always know in advance that I am going to have pizza that day. The long raising time ensures that the crust has great flavor. It also has an amazing texture that you just don’t get from your quick pizza dough recipes. It is a lot wetter than most of the dough I use for rolls or bread. Trust me, it works out, because you will bake it at a really high heat (500 degrees Farenheith) for only 8 minutes. The other nice thing is that since you don’t have to knead it, you hardly work it at all, just stir it enough to bring the ingredients together and then cover it and walk away, for the rest of the day. Talk about lazy.

For my recipe I added half to the original because my kids have started really liking pizza and they are getting big enough to eat their share. You can check out that link for the original recipe which is better for two people, but here is what I do for our family of four (the baby doesn’t count yet)

So just add everything together, probably in the biggest bowl you have. Stir it with a big spoon until it all comes together into a scraggy ball. Then cover it until you are ready to start making your pizza.

Here is my method.

I make the dough either Thursday night, Friday morning or around noon on Friday if the morning got away from me. Then around 4:30 I turn on the oven to 500 and grab a jar of my tomato sauce. (here is the post on how I make it) I pour the sauce into a small sauce pan and let it simmer while I am doing everything else. The reason for that is because a runny sauce tends to make pizza soggy. I like it to be on the paste side so that it will just sit on the top of the dough. Simmering it also brings out the sweetness of the tomatoes, in my opinion.

As a side note, you can, of course use store bought pizza sauce. If you do, I still recommend simmering it for a while to thicken it. Or you can follow the suggestion from smitten kitchen and drain your tomatoes before you puree them. I am sure that would work as well. I know some tomato sauce recipes suggest that anyway, I just always figure if you boil the water out, rather than draining it off, it leaves more goodness in the sauce. I don’t have any proof of that though. I’ve never tasted the two versions side by side so I can’t really say if there is a difference. Anyway, back to my recipe.

Then I pull out my trays and get them ready for the pizza. For me that means one round pizza pan and two cookie sheets, because that’s what I have. I usually make two pizzas and one pan of bread sticks. I put silicone mats on my cookie sheets and oil all three surfaces. I spread the oil with my left hand and leave the oil on it for the next step. The pizza pan I also sprinkle with corn meal (with my right hand) so I can get the pizza off easier.

Then I dump the dough out onto one of the greased cookie sheets and split it into three sections. The dough is super sticky so I put olive oil on my hands. Then I just kind of stretch and pull it into the shape I want for my pizzas. For the bread sticks, I leave the dough a little thicker throughout, but the pizza I spread pretty thin, except for the rim, for crust.

If it is super elastic-y and I can’t get it to stretch out I just let it rest for a minute while I am pulling stuff out. When I come back it usually works better.

After the dough is all spread out I pop the bread sticks into the oven and set the timer for 9 minutes. While they are baking I get the first pizza ready. I spread a thin layer of butter over the whole top so the sauce won’t just soak into the dough.

Next comes the sauce, which will hopefully be pretty thick by now.

After that I spread a bit of mozzarella cheese then Italian sausage,

…pepperoni, sauteed bell peppers and onions when I have them.

Then more mozzarella and some Parmesan on top of everything.

On part of one pizza I put pickled jalapenos for the hubby and on another I put chopped fresh tomatoes if I have them, for me. I put them on top because the kids don’t like them anyway, and that way they don’t steal our pizza. Then the pizza goes in the oven for 9 minutes, at 500 degrees F. (you might want to start with 8 minutes until you figure out your oven) When it comes out I spread butter on the crust and sprinkle it with garlic powder, salt and basil. YUM! That’s also what I put on the bread sticks.

Then I let the pizza set for about 5 minutes before sliding a cutting board underneath it and slicing it up. Then it’s all ready to eat! We take it all into the living room and turn on a movie while we are eating, I know that’s not great food etiquette, but it sure is fun! I am hoping that we will keep the tradition going forever.