Pizza Pizzazz

I am on such a bread making kick lately and my sourdough starter has been bubbling away like mad. I have been feeding it well over the last week to get it very active for my thanksgiving bread baking. Of course, when you feed starter you need to throw some out each time. I hate to kill my babies. So, I decided instead to use the extra for pizza dough. Pizza is really easy and you can do just about anything with it. I just top it with whatever I have around at the time. My dough was made solely from flour, salt, water, a bit of oil, and my starter.

Here are the ingredients I scrounged up for this batch of pizza:

Chopped garlic, dried oregano and basil, salt, pepper, pastrami, kalamata olives, fresh tomato slices and fresh mozzarella.

I didn't use a sauce on this on as I wanted the flavor of fresh tomatoes to dominate. But I do often use a simple tomato sauce.

First step is to stretch the dough into a round. This is the most fun part! You get to feel the dough. Pull it. Toss it if you dare. But get it flattened out and ready to go. I brushed this with olive oil and sprinkled on the herbs, salt and pepper. I always brush my dough with oil even if I'm using sauce to prevent the dough from getting to wet from the ingredients that top it.

This was topped with the fresh tomato, fresh chopped garlic, olives, pastrami and fresh mozzarella. Of course you can add just about any ingredient you like. Early in my pizza making days I made the mistake of piling on too many ingredients. Go light. Don't overdo it. Otherwise your pizza will be too heavy, too thick and will not cook well.

Here's the final product after being baked for about 10 minutes in a hot (500 degree) oven. Of course I use a baking stone to get that crispy crust.

bon appetit