When The Moon Hits Your Eye...

Like a big pizza pie - THAT'S AMORE! It's been a very long time since I've blogged about my love for homemade pizza. Specifically my favorite great aunt's pizza. She's made this pizza for well over 50 years and everyone who has tried it, has loved it. The dough is thin and crisp, yet it's also got this amazing chew. It's got a great twang from the yeast and she knows exactly how much of each topping to put on so they all meld beautifully once the pie is brought from the oven. OHMYGOD smells SO GOOD.. TASTES even BETTER! I blogged about her pizza many moons ago going on about how I was a pizza snob and how unconventional her recipe was compared to what I've read about. Well this month's Daring Baker challenge proved that yet again. Hosted by the lovely Rosa of Rosa's Yummy Yum's! You did an amazing job! Rosa took over after Sherry of What Did You Eat? passed this past July. Personally, I think Sher would have been extremely proud of Rosa and all of the Daring Bakers this month! Her idea for pizza was a fabulous one and the recipe she chose was excellent! :) This recipe, written by Peter Reinhart and can be found in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, was very different from my Auntie's recipe. The dough is made with cold flour, ice cold water, a small amount of instant yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil. That's a big difference from water, flour and yeast that I'm used to. But lemme tell yous.. the texture of this dough is rather uhmm.. moist. It is very very sticky - the wettest pizza dough I've ever dealt with for sure. I had that stuff stuck to everything but the fakkin' dogs for crissakes. Thank God they were sleeping in the living room when I made the dough! :) NONETHELESS it was fabulous. Holy cow, talk about silky smooth and pliable after it had fermented over night in the fridge! And once it was baked.. it was so tender. Yes the texture of this dough is what I fell in love with. The taste? Not so much.. I mean, don't get me wrong.. it was good.. but I missed that tangy flavor from what I assume is the yeast in my Auntie's pizza dough. Someone needs to educate me on this.. because I know now that my Auntie uses WAY TOO MUCH yeast in her recipe (3 packets of yeast to 6 c. of flour), yes? Is there another way to get that same flavor without adding so much? Is the flavor tamed after it sits for so long? Because her recipe is only sitting long enough to double in size twice (approx. 2 hours). I ask all of this because I think I could produce THE BEST PIZZA DOUGH EVER if I could just get the taste of my Auntie's pizza combined with the texture of Reinhart's pizza. :) Anyhoo.. I'm getting ahead of myself. The taste of Reinhart's dough is flavorful, just not what I'm used to. I did discover that if your sauce is on the salty side it will not pair well with this dough.. for me my first pizzas were way too salty and I couldn't get through 2 slices. Hubbs, on the other hand, thought it was good. I made another pizza a week later with the extra dough frozen from the original batch. This time I simply par-baked the dough for about 5 minutes, then lightly brushed it with a little butter. Next, I sprinkled on this amazing combination of spices that I'd never used before called JoJo Potato from The Spice Depot. I'll be writing more about these spices in a future post.. they are delicious! On top of the spiced butter I spread shredded chicken, pineapple, more spice and shredded Monterey Jack cheese. *BOING* 'kay well if I had one.. it would have *BOING*'d when I bit into that pizza.. oh my lawd, it was SO SO GOOD! So without many mishaps this month (BUMMER) I'm pleased with my challenge and will continue to work on it so that I might find that perfect (for me) pizza dough that brings that twang I'm looking for to the tenderness of this dough. Lots of amazing topping combinations out in Daring Baker Land today! I've already started my list of which I'll be trying in the future! CANNOT! WAIT! Oh and before I end this.. big hug and thanks to Natalie for helping with the gluten-free version of this recipe so our Daring Alternative Bakers wouldn't have a tough time joining in! xoxo

Super Stuffed French Bread Pizza Rustica

Time somehow got away from me yesterday - and I have no idea how that happened, as I did nothing.. nada.. not a thing. But somehow it got too late to run to the grocery store for the planned meal of Hand Hacked Pot Stickers with a Tangy Ginger Sauce from the Cooking Light book. It might have been something to do with all the fakkin rain. I swear, leave it to me to take a week off when all it does is rain. *sigh* All I could muster up the energy for yesterday was some light cleaning and mostly ploppin me arse on the couch all day watching movies and reading a book. Woo. So anyhoo, I didn't have the wonton wrappers to make the meal I had planned, thankfully I remembered I had promised to make Rachael Ray's Super Stuffed French Bread Pizza Rustica for Hubbs at some point in the week. Last night was the night. I've had some luck with Rachael's recipes and then I've had some major bombs as well. I wasn't sure how these were going to turn out but I didn't have a super good feeling as I'm not a huge french bread pizza fan and well.. I'm a pizza snob in the first place. I really only like the pizza's I make that were taught to me by my Auntie Ann. But what's a girl to do when she's too lazy to round up ingredients? I didn't use the exact "stuffing" ingredients as Rachael did and pretty much just stuffed them with what we had in the fridge. But let me tell you.. these were fanfarkingtastic! I think the two reasons these turned out sooooo damn good was because of Rachael's idea of browning sausage onions and bell pepper then combining them with ricotta cheese. That was the base of the stuffing. The other reason I think they were so delicious is that I used a pork sausage made with sage that Hubbs always buys when he goes out to farm land to visit his brother's cabin. I use to never like sausage on my pizzas before, until I tried this particular sausage made exclusively at this tiny mom and pop grocery store in Jefferson, Ohio. It is fabulous. They are very heavy as you really stuff them with a lot of "toppings". And you use a good sized loaf of French bread that you hollow out. I got about 6 nice sized slices for each half of the pizza and I could barely get two of them down, it was so filling. The bread crisps up nicely and gives a good chew along with a nice crust on the bottom - and the best thing is, with all the stuffing plus my addition of some of my marinara, the bread did not get soggy whatsoever. I sliced one half for us to enjoy and froze the other half for another day when we wanted something super quick to munch on. Had I known they'd be so damn filling, I wouldn't have baked the other half and just froze it instead. Next time I'll know. I'm going to post Rachael's recipe as I found it on Food TV and I'll note the changes I made to ours. Try this if you are in need of something really quick and filling one night.. they were awesome. =) Rachael Ray's Super Stuffed French Bread Pizza Rustica 1 (2 foot long) loaf French bread 1 pound sweet Italian sausage 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 small red bell pepper, seeded and chopped 1 small onion, chopped 2 large cloves garlic, chopped 1 package frozen chopped spinach defrosted and squeezed dry (I didn't have spinach, so it was omitted) Salt and pepper 1 1/2 cups part skim ricotta 1/2 cup grated Parmesan 1/2 pound sweet sopressata, from the deli, sliced thick, chopped (Didn't have this as well, so it was omitted) 1/2 stick pepperoni, chopped (I didn't chop mine, but made a layer under the cheese of sliced pepperoni) 1 sack (10 ounces) shredded mozzarella (I used the crumbled Italian 4 cheese blend type cheese) 1 sack (10 ounces) shredded provolone 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes I added maybe 1/4 cup of my marinara, which I spread lightly over the sausage mixture, before adding the rest of my toppings. It wasn't much - but enough to add a little more moisture to the mix. I also added mild banana peppers, black olives and sliced mushrooms. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Split bread lengthwise and hollow it out. Cut in half across, making 4 shells for pizzas. Heat a skillet over medium high flame and brown sausage in extra-virgin olive oil. Brown and crumble sausage. Add red bell pepper, onion and garlic. Cook 3 to 5 minutes, add spinach. Remove mixture from heat and season with a pinch of salt and black pepper, to your taste. Transfer to a bowl. Combine sausage and veggies with ricotta, Parmesan, sopressata and pepperoni. Fill bread shells and top with mounded mozzarella and provolone cheeses. Place in hot oven on cookie sheet and bake until cheese melts and bubbles and bread is super crisp, about 10 to 12 minutes. Top pizzas with oregano and hot pepper flakes. Serve immediately, or snack all night!

Deep Dish Eggplant Parmesan Pizza

Still on my eggplant & zucchini kick over here.. These two veggies alone make it easy for me to see how some people go vegetarian. Seriously. I haven't missed beef very much these past couple weeks, which is way weird for me. heee! I sat down with my Cuisine at Home magazines again and picked out 3 or 4 recipes that I've got slated to try this week and next. My first was this Deep Dish Eggplant Parmesan Pizza. Unfortunately, it didn't thrill me. Although this is my fault, I kinda burned the crust. oops. I was shocked to see that this normally excellent publication that always shows you step by step instructions in making their recipes, including pictures, did not explain how long to blind bake the crust. Something I've never done before. It just said to bake it until it's golden.. well.. the damn dough is golden to start with and I didn't see much of a different goldeny difference after 10 minutes, so I went for another 5. It still didn't look much different from when I originally put it in the oven but I figured, jeezzzusssss it's gotta be done, right? Well it was.. probably too done, as after it baked the allotted time with the eggplant filling in it, the crust came out a dark brown.. like burnt dark brown. *sigh* The other not so great thing about this pizza was that there was no sauce used. You simply slather crushed tomatoes over your layers of cheese and eggplant. So the taste was closer to blah than anything else. I even salted between layers, figuring the crushed tomatoes weren't going to give much taste. Hmm.. So, I firmly believe, had I not overbaked the crust and had I used my marinara or my Aunt's simple pizza sauce, this would have been a fabulous new recipe for me. The good thing was, the 2 lbs. of eggplant called for was wayyyy wayyyy too much for my 10" cast iron skillet - so with the remaining eggplant and cheese, I layered in an 8" x 8" glass Pyrex dish with my marinara and THAT turned out fabulous. lol I will make this pizza again and I will make those changes, because the idea of this deep dish pizza is fabulous. They also give another version called Deep Dish Supreme pizza, which I might try as well. =) Deep Dish Eggplant Parmesan Pizza For the Crust: 3/4 c. warm water (105º-115ºF) 1 TBS. sugar 1 pkg. (1/4 oz.) active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsps.) 2 TBS. olive oil Combine water, yeast and sugar. Proof until foamy, about 5 minutes, then add oil. 2 c. all-purpose flour 1/3 c. yellow cornmeal 2 tsp. kosher salt Mix flour, cornmeal and salt in the bowl of a standard mixer fitted with a dough hook; add yeast mixture. Knead on low speed for 10 minutes, or until smooth. (If kneading by hand, knead for the same amount of time) Form dough into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about one hour. Punch dough down and re-shape into a ball. Return to oiled bowl, cover and let rise again, about one hour. Preheat oven to 450ºF. with the rack on the bottom; coat a 9" cast iron skillet with 1-2 teaspoons oil. Divide dough in half; wrap one half in plastic and freeze for later use. Roll out remaining ball, line the prepared skillet, dock the sides to prevent puffing and blind bake. "Since the fillings are so dense, the crust must be prebaked or it will be raw and doughy on the bottom. So you need to "blind bake" the crust, like pie dough sometimes is. First, line the dough with foil, keeping the edges exposed, then fill the dough with dried beans. This will help keep the sides from collapsing during the first bake. After baking briefly, lift out the foil and beans. At this point, the sides will be set, but bake the crust again to cook the bottom. (If you have a pizza stone, be sure to use it here - it helps crisp the bottom crust even more.)" You see? It doesn't say how long.. so may the force be with you :D For the filling: 2 lb. eggplant 2 c. all-purpose flour 6 eggs, beaten with 3 TBS milk Vegetable oil, about 1" deep for frying Salt to taste 6 oz. fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced 2/3 c. Parmesan cheese, grated 1 c. canned crushed tomatoes *Note: This recipe does not call for you to salt the uncooked planks of eggplant, let sit for 30 min. then rinse, to bring out some moisture and to tone down the bitterness of the vegetable. I don't know if it's necessary or not, but I took this extra step because I didn't want to take a chance of bitterness. It's optional though. =) Peel eggplant and slice lengthwise into 1/4" thick planks. (I didn't peel mine and it came out just fine) Place flour and egg mixture into separate shallow dishes; line a baking sheet with paper towels. Heat oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Dredge eggplant in flour, then dip into egg mixture. Fry eggplant in oil for about 15 seconds per side, or until golden brown. Drain on the baking sheet and season with salt. Layer the eggplant, both cheeses and tomatoes 4 or 5 times into the crust, dividing items evenly among the layers. I only got about 3 layers.. quite possibly my eggplant and cheese slices were too thick? Finish top layer with mozzarella and Parmesan. Bake pizza 25-30 minutes, or until cheese is brown and bubbly. Let rest 5 minutes so the cheese can set, before slicing. They suggest serving this pizza with a Roasted Tomato Sauce spooned on top of each slice. Unfortunately, the day I made this pizza was the day my IP decided to take a crap on me and I couldn't get online to get the recipe, so I can not vouch for it's taste but I am including the recipe in case anyone would like to try it. =) Roasted Tomato Sauce 8 cups (4 lb.) Roma tomatoes, quartered 1 cup onion, chopped 4 cloves garlic, whole 2 t. kosher salt 1 t. red pepper flakes 1 t. sugar Toss with: 1/2 cup olive oil Stir in: 1/2 cup fresh basil, chiffonade Preheat oven to 450°. Combine first 6 ingredients in a large casserole dish. Toss with olive oil and roast 35-40 minutes, or until tomatoes have softened. Remove from oven and mash with a potato masher, keeping tomatoes a bit chunky. Stir in basil. As if this post wasn't long enough *cough* *cough* I had a boatload of eggplant and cheese left over after overstuffing my pizza. So I made a mini pan of Eggplant Parmesan, layering the eggplant and cheeses like I did with the pizza, but instead of using the crushed tomatoes I used my marinara. I baked it at the 450º F for 30 minutes and like I said wayyyyyy up there.. it was fabulous :D

Pizza Snob

I don't think I mentioned in my 100 list, and I'm shocked that I didn't.. I'm a total pizza snob. There is only one pizza I'll eat, the kind my Aunt Ann taught me to make. Rarely I'll be forced to eat delivery pizza, but believe me, only if I'm starving and sooooooooooooooo tired that I can barely slave over a hot phone - and those times I mostly order Chinese or subs. I grew up on my Auntie's pizza. She is known throughout the land as the Pizza Lady and there are (seriously) dozens of kids that grew up in her neighborhood (and surrounding neighborhoods) that would show up at her house every Friday night for a slice or two of the thinnest, most delectable pizza EVER. Actually my sisters and I were the unfortunate ones. We lived across town and we didn't get to go to my Auntie's house every single Friday because of our restaurant. But my parents did manage to get us there often and even if it wasn't Friday, she'd make us her pizza. I love my Auntie soooooooooooooo much!! She's a wonderful lady that everyone loves upon meeting her once. Two years ago, we made a date for her to teach me how to make the pizza. I felt especially honored, since she had taught no one else before me and so far, no one after me. And believe me, I take this pizza making stuff seriously. I keep plugging away and will continue to until I have mastered her pizza. The dough keeps getting better and better, but I don't think it's quite there yet - still needs a lil tweaking. My mother says it's there. Hubbs and friends of ours love it (but he nor they have ever had my Aunt's - so they don't count lol) but I'm not satisfied yet. I'm just going to have to keep making pizzas.. yep, it's a dirty job.. but someone's gotta do it. (gladly!) You might think I've made a typo when you see that we use 3 packets of dry active yeast to 1 cup of water instead of the "normal" 1 packet to 1 cup of water, but I haven't. That extra yeast is what gives my Aunt's pizza it's distinctive flavor. Furthermore, you might be shocked to see that I don't put sugar in with the yeast nor do I put any salt or oil in the dough. I'm trying to stay as authentic to my Aunt's teachings as I can and she never uses any of those ingredients. She did not use fresh vegetables, herbs or garlic in her pizza sauce and she did not use a pizza stone, so this recipe might even sound a bit barbaric to some. But it's still the best pizza I've ever had. Granted, I can't help but want to experiment with ingredients and flavors - I've started a list already - but until I feel I've mastered her way, it's going to stay her way. Yanno? =) Auntie Ann's Pizzas For the Dough: 3 (1/4 oz.) packets of dry, active yeast 1 c. lukewarm water 4 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour (6 c. will make 6 thin pizzas, 4 c. will make 3 thin pizzas) additional water Dissolve the yeast in the 1 cup of water, let sit for 5 minutes. If you have a stand alone mixer, use the bread dough hook and mix the flour with the yeast mixture, adding tablespoons of water as needed if your dough looks dry. Continue to mix until dough forms a ball. Place dough ball onto well floured flat surface and knead for 5 minutes. Form into tight ball and put in a large, oiled bowl covering with a just damp clean kitchen towel (just drape towel over bowl, don't form it around dough). Place bowl in a warm, dry area. Let the dough sit and double in size (roughly 1 hour), punch the dough down and allow it to rise once again. For the Sauce: 1 (29 oz.) can of tomato sauce The rest of the ingredients are to taste, but here's what I used my last batch: 1 TBS. parsley 1 TBS. onion powder 1 TBS. garlic powder 1 tsp. oregano 2 tsp. basil Simmer for an hour or longer, stirring occasionally. Toppings: Whatever your lil heart desires =) To prepare the pizzas: Preheat oven to 400º F. Grease your pizza pans with shortening. I'm talking the white lard Crisco type stuff. Oil can definitely be used, but I find spreading the dough goes much easier with something not so "slippery". Place a softball sized wad of dough in the middle of your pan and start spreading it out working it so that you are spreading from the middle to the edges. This causes less holes in such a thin crust. If you do encounter holes, either pinch them shut if you've got enough dough or add a little "dough patch" - but make sure you have no holes before you add your sauce. Once you have the dough spread, place pizza sauce on top and spread it to about 1/2 inch from the edge (or you can be like me and "slip" every once in a while so that you get a lil burnt sauce on your crust :D ) then add your toppings. Always keep in mind, try not to overload your pizza, the thin crust won't get crispy if you do. Place in preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Check your pies and if they look all golden brown and bubbly, they are done. Another step I take to see if they are done is I carefully slide a wide metal spatula underneath and lift the crust a bit to see if it's brown underneath near the middle. If it is, done - done - done =)