2 weeks later and the dog chew mark still hurts
Man I hope our mixed babies come out as cute as our potential first child MacChow.
It annoys me that I bought a few packs of 2000 flushes and put one in each bathroom. The only one that happens to have a PH balance issue is the guest bathroom. What happens when the PH balance is off you say? The water turns red. I learned the hard way. How gross.
GPOYDW
Cast iron skillet pizza #2. Delicious… 100% scratch also.
Cast iron skillet pizza. 100 % scratch. Dough Sauce Everything.
I have to say that this was my first adventure into pizza making. My definition of pizza is normally picking up the phone, dialing the local pizza shop, and ordering up the pizza i’m in the mood for currently. Since I now live with and need to share in decisions with my significant other, my hawaiian pizza consumption has been WAY down.
This pizza adventure was the culmination of two fantastic things:
1) Bobby Flay cookbook that I’ve committed to going through recipe by recipe
2) my new Le Creuset skillet! (I picked one up at the outlets over the weekend on the cheap -well, relatively cheap.)
So here we are. home made pizza.
Most pizza recipes I found and used for inspiration called for ready-made pizza sauce or canned tomatoes. Lucky for me, I happened to have just made up a batch of “Maroni Sauce” from Grandma Maroni’s meatball recipe in Bobby Flay’s Throwdown.
1/4 cup of olive oil
12 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 yellow onion, finely diced
2 cans crushed tomatoes (depending on the salt content of these, give or take some salt)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 handful of basil leaves, thinly sliced (and if you’re me, you cut them thinly with scissors)
Easy peasy recipe. In my dutch oven, i heated olive oil over medium heat and added garlic and onions until they were slightly browned (about 5 minutes)
Add tomatoes and pepper and stir.
Simmer for 20 minutes and remove the heat and add basil
like I said - easy. I usually make a double/triple batch and freeze them up so I have a couple batches ready to go for lazy days or if I have recipes that need pasta sauce. If you’re feeling extra adventurous, you can freeze them in ice cube trays or what I usually do, in 2-3 serving sized batches.
Pizza Crust
2.25 tbsp active yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water (about 110°F)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
Combine yeast, sugar and water and let stand 5 minutes until foamy
Add butter, flour, corn flour and salt and combine well
Then I used the dough hook to knead the dough for about 10 minutes
When done, I covered and let it rise until it doubled.
This, my friends, is when we’re ready for toppings!
While I was topping the pizza, I put my LC skillet in the oven to preheat to 500 degrees. Once I slid the pizza into the LC, I baked on the bottom rack for 15 min. After 15 min, I turned down the heat to 400 degrees and added any ingredients that burn easier like the meats. If you do basil, add that as soon as it comes out of the oven. Any more heat will burn the fragile basil leaves.
Lastly, enjoy!
I will try to follow up with post with my next foray into pizza making. I made two different doughs and saved half of both. I wanted to see whether this was something you could make in batches and refrigerate for a later day. The other dough I used tasted more like a deep dish pizza dough and I didn’t really like it as much so I didn’t post.
Made turkey noodle soup and a pear crisp today.. Probably should have taken a pic of the pear crisp that came out delicious but it’s half eaten already. Tweaked the recipe so it is 100% butter free.
