Kicked up pizza bianca

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.

Pizza and high water

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

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

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

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!

Pesto Pizza

Nothing says summer yum like a pesto pizza with fresh tomatoes. I used the same pizza dough recipe that I've blogged about recently. Instead of a tomato sauce I used freshly prepared pesto (all basil this time without the spinach). This was slathered on the dough and topped with mozzarella and fresh tomato slices. It was very satisfying.

Pretty darn good pizza dough

I like my sourdough pizza's that I've made in the past, but I have to say I am pretty impressed with the pizza dough recipe my wife recently found. She found it looking for a breadstick recipe for our son. First, let me give credit where credit's due. The recipe came from the blog of Amy Clark at momadvice.com. The recipe is a take on a Pizza Hut dough copycat. Now, just like Amy, I don't really care for Pizza Hut crust. It is way too greasy for me and seems to be too airy. I liken it to a sponge that has been dipped in the deep fryer. So, I was a little bit skeptical when my wife said she was making a dough similar to Pizza Hut. I was quite surprised, however, that it came out GREAT. The recipe is unique in that it uses both yeast as well as baking powder. This gives it a bit more lift in the oven and makes for a great texture. Not too airy like Pizza Hut and definitly not greasy. It still had a nice chewy texture but was easier to bite than my typical pizza dough. I have to say it is a winner. The pizza you see above was made with this recipe but a little more than half of the flour was whole wheat. Often I find whole wheat crust tends to be tough but this one turned out great. It was still easy to bite with a great flavor. The first time we tried this recipe it made a dough that was way too wet. This time we added a bit more flour and it was perfect. Of course flour hydration varies a lot depending on the climate. You may want to play around with it. I like my pizza dough a little bit on the wet side anyway.

Pizza Hut Style Pizza Dough

1 1/3 cups water
2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp cornmeal
3 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Another pizza

I've talked about making pizza before so I won't go into details about the dough and stuff. I just wanted to post a quick post to share my latest one. This one has an all white flour crust that was softened by the addition of some olive oil to the dough. I did use my sourdough starter along with some yeast to help boost it as I only had a day to raise this dough. Topped with a basic commercial pizza sauce and mozarella cheese. Underneath the cheese are pieces of a really nice hard salami that I picked up at Trader Joe's. It added just the right hint of flavor.

Better than Domino's Pizza

There's nothing better than homemade pizza. Pizza is a simple food. And simple food is extraordinary. The trick to making great pizza is to just lightly dress it with toppings. If you load them on the crust cannot bake properly and you end up with a soggy mess. I like to add just a little bit of something that is really really flavorful. This could be some outstanding ham or some really sharp flavorful cheese. Last evening I made a pizza with just artichoke hearts and kalamata olives. The olives are packed with salty flavor that really makes this pizza. I just used a jarred spaghetti sauce that I flavored with some dried oregano and basil. This just lightly coated the crust. Mozzarella cheese lightly sprinkled on top brought it all together.

The number one most important thing about pizza is the crust. My standard crust consists of yeast or a sourdough starter, all purpose flour, water, salt, and olive oil. The oil makes for a softer dough. This pizza, however, was made with 100% whole wheat flour and a whole wheat sourdough starter. I am making a whole grain bread this weekend (to be posted later) so I had a starter that I was feeding. I used about 1/2 cup of the sourdough starter and a couple cups of whole wheat flour. This was mixed together with some water to make a wet dough. I let this rise in the refrigerator over night. The dough was taken out around 3:00 in the afternoon to let it continue rising at room temperature. Whole wheat flour makes for a dough that is not as stretchy as a white flour dough because there is less gluten and the whole wheat hulls tend to cut the gluten strands. So you have to be careful with this. I patted this out into a pizza shape and topped it up with the toppings described above. This went into a 500F oven on my pizza stone to bake until nicely brown and bubbling - about 8 minutes.

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