Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Playing with Pizza

You gotta eat! With four kids to feed and two full time jobs, “pizza delivery” became a mantra at our house. Most of the kids have moved out now, but return on occasion. We were lazy one visit and ordered pizza. The bill was $49 for two very lovely pizzas from our local favorite Villa Roma Pizza. Lord that’s a lot of money!

Hey! My wife and I are good chefs, why not make pizza at home? So we did. With a little investment for a pizza stone, for the oven, and a pizza peel we began. I have to give credit to my wife, she is the dough maker. The dough recipe was liberated from Tyler Florence of Food Network fame. Depending on her mood the dough is made in a food processor or stand mixer. I think it is better to let the dough rest longer than the recipe calls for. If you are really an adventurous chef hand toss. We normally just use a rolling pin. Pre heat the oven to get the stone screaming hot, top the dough and shove it into the oven. That’s the tricky part. Make sure you flour the peel so the pizza will slide off. I think if I were starting again I would bake just a flat of dough to practice. The first time I tried to slip my heavily topped pizza on to the stone, I ended up with scrambled pizza. Most embarrassing. The bottom line is that the homemade pizza costs a quarter of the price of delivery. Make smaller pizzas so everyone can have their own topping. Use up leftover bits of meat and cheese for toppings. My latest experiment was putting the pizza on the Weber with indirect heat with a smoky and flavorful result. Two Buck Chuck (Charles Shaw from Trader Joe’s) Merlot is a nice wine pairing. Be frugal, but more importantly enjoy!

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pepperoni pizza on the grill

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finished product

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Aprils "it's not easy being green" pizza. Fresh basil, olive oil and parmesan cheese

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Green pizza please!

Amy Sherman said...

I've had pretty good results using Trader Joe's pizza dough. Only $1 for a big ball of it in the refrigerator section.

cookiecrumb said...

If you think of it a day ahead of time, your dough will benefit from slow proofing in the fridge overnight. And totally grill it! Cook one side, flip it, and then apply toppings. Might even want to put the lid on. We use a dinky Smoky Joe (I'd be too scared to hold my camera over it, so bravo to you).
Oh, and Amy: shoot, I didn't even *know* about TJ's dough. Heh!