Best PIzza Dough Discovered

Yesterday was a sad day for me, as my library copy of  was due. I've been continuously renewing this all summer, and now I'm out of renewals! I've loved many recipes in here: Potato and Leek Soup, Bolognese Sauce, Beef Stew, Pesto, Cornbread. And I'm eager to try more. I think I have to physically leave the book at the library, make sure no one has been desperately waiting for it, and then head back to check it out again. The one thing we've made constantly from this book was the pizza dough. I flavored it up by using white-whole wheat flour, and it's just delicious. And somehow not as puffy as our first experience. I've shared photos of past pizzas with this dough. And now my freezer is stocked :) Below is my very subtle variation on the original, with all of the quantities doubled because, seriously, if you're going to this much trouble in the first place, why not double the payoffs?

Pizza Dough
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
{Edited on 10/12/2010; oops! I don't use white-whole wheat flour exclusively, unless I'm interested in a shaggy dough that never comes together and stubbornly refuses to rise!)

• 4 teaspoons dry yeast
• 1 cup lukewarm water

Stir the above together in a measuring cup.

• 1/2 cup unbleached white or white whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rye flour

Add the above to the measuring cup and mix well. Allow the mixture to sit until quite bubbly, about 30 minutes.

• 6 1/2 cups unbleached white OR 3 1/2 cups white and 3 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons salt

Combine the above in a separate bowl or dough storage container. Add the yeast mixture and the following:

• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Mix thoroughly by hand. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until soft and elastic, about 5 minutes. If the dough is too wet and sticky, add more flour, but only enough to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. Put the dough in a large bowl or back in the dough container, cover with a clean towel or partially open lid, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours. (Notes from Alice Waters: For an even better-tasting and more supple dough, let the dough rise slowly overnight in the refrigerator. Remove from the refrigerator 2 hours before shaping.)

Divide the dough into two, then divide each half into two, forming four nice smooth balls. Allow the dough balls to rest at room temperature, wrapped loosely in plastic, for an hour or so. Then do either:

1. Freeze dough: Roll the plastic tightly around the disks, and freeze for up to 2 months in a tightly sealed freezer bag. Defrost overnight, then let dough rest at room temperature at least one hour before proceeding as below.

2. Bake dough: Flatten each ball into a disk about 5 or 6 inches in diameter, flour lightly, cover, and let rest for another 15 minutes. Place a baking stone on the lowest rack in the oven (I can't do this since mine cracked! so I put a baking sheet on the center oven rack), and preheat to 500 degrees. Gently stretch each disk into a round roughly 10 inches in diameter, and place on a floured peel or inverted baking sheet. Brush the dough with olive oil, and top with your ingredients, leaving a 1/2-inch border uncovered. Slide the pizza onto the stone or tray, and bake until the crust is browned, about 10-15 minutes.

In Search of the Perfect Pizza Crust, Part 2

Before I dip into my whole grain pizza crust excursion, let me tell you that I tried another all-white crust. This is the Olive Oil Dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. What a delicious Pizza Margherita.

In line with the goals of this cookbook, the Olive Oil Dough is such a simple recipe, far quicker to pull off than my all-time favorite recipe from Williams-Sonoma, which requires a lot of hands-on time. This would make a weekly Friday night pizza quite doable even for a family with many munchkins, like ours (barring a Friday night TBall game or other obligations of course). But, sadly, we lost a dear friend in our bread baking using this high-heat recipe. This one doesn't work so well without a stone, and we haven't been able to make this again.

Moving on with the "search" in my post title. In my goody-two-shoes effort to integrate more whole grains in our diet, I'm looking for the perfect crust that includes whole grains. Note that I do not require this to be a 100% whole grain crust. I realize that the textural issues I'll get to below may be ameliorated by the addition of some good old plain white flour.

My first try was a recipe from The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution. This one includes rye flour, which gave the dough a slightly grainier feel and the cooked pizza a much nuttier taste. Below we made a plain cheese and a cheese and tomato. Both were delicious, but the dough, as the kids pointed out, tasted "like bread." Indeed, this was very puffy, much more of a rise than I prefer in a pizza crust. But maybe I'm asking too much from this recipe, which really is quite delicious if not exactly what a child expects on pizza night.

As anyone who bakes with yeast may agree, handling the dough is one of the most luxurious sensory experiences. Some girls need a massage and a hot tub soak. I'll take kneading dough over that any day. (Minus the temporary carpal tunnel-like sensation you often have afterward.) Alice Waters' dough was fabulous in the hands! Just look at the photo below. Truly like baby skin. And I get my fair share of baby skin...

So, still moving on, and looking for something less puffy. I used the Friday Night Pizza recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.). This uses roughly half whole wheat and half white flour and made a delicious crust, again with the nutty and more crumbly texture expected from whole grains. The kids devoured this and noted that it was definitely not as puffy as our previous experiment. Among those kiddos that have the power of speech in this house, it was agreed that this is not a "favorite" crust, probably yearning for the days when mom was satisfied with just one attempt at pizza crust which would have left them with a lovely thin white crust. But, hey, mom has three kids now and a new career that involves eating, cooking, shopping for food, and writing recipes. These are the breaks.

Rounding things off with some steamed green beans. This lovely colorful finger food is actually sweet if you cook them within a couple days of purchase and don't nuke them to a mushy tasteless death. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, add a large pinch of salt and the beans (you can also add the beans in a steamer basket - I know that preserves nutrients but it also gives me another dish to wash), and boil for 3 to 4 minutes. You'll have to take one out and taste it to know if they're ready to drain. While the beans are in the pot, prepare a small bowl of ice water. Then you'll be ready to pull those beans out with a slotted spoon or quickly dump them in a colander and then get them in the ice water. I top them with a small sprinkle of kosher salt after draining them from the ice water.

I also made my favorite pizza, a margherita with cheese, tomato, and basil. I prefer slices of mozzarella from the hunk you can buy floating in a little cheese water bath, but the kids think that's "weird." So compromises are made.

Here's the recipe, which I followed without tweaking, straight from the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website.

Do you have a favorite pizza crust recipe? Let me know in the comments, and I'll give it a try.

Quick Meal Friday: Fish Pita Pockets

This is a refreshing take on the old make-your-own taco night than I'm sure many of us had as kids. Remember opening the box of El Paso hard corn tortillas? The sheer delight of choosing your own fillings? Hmm... were yours like the ones I recall? Ground beef sauteed in a seasoning packet? Shredded cheddar or American cheese? Shredded iceberg lettuce? Jarred salsa? Possibly tomatoes?

{BTW, Trader Joes attempted a little comeback on this classic family dinner, selling its own boxed pre-formed tortilla shells and a meat seasoning packet (incidentally we found the seasoning to be far too spicy for our wimpy taste buds). Just in case you need to revisit your past...}

Here we made our own lightly battered, fried fish fillet slices, and served these with baby spinach, sliced purple cabbage, and a yogurt sauce in homemade pita pockets. I'll get to those in a future post. Go ahead, buy your own pita and you could get this on the table in under 30 minutes.

Fish Pita Pockets
Serves 4.

one pound whitefish fillets (we used frozen tilapia)
1/2 cup panko crumbs
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Kosher salt and ground pepper
2 eggs
1/4 head of purple cabbage
4 ounces baby spinach leaves
8 ounces nonfat Greek yogurt
zest and juice of one lemon
2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley or cilantro or dill
1/4 cup canola oil, plus extra as needed for frying

Pat dry fish fillets with paper towels and slice crosswise into one-inch-wide strips. Combine panko, flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a shallow dish, such as a pie plate. In a second shallow dish, whisk eggs gently. Slice the cabbage and place in serving dish. Rinse spinach and place in serving dish. Gently whisk together yogurt, lemon juice, lemon zest, herbs and salt and pepper in a third dish.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Check temperature by flicking water from your hands into the pan; when the bubbles jump, the pan is ready. Dip fish strips into egg dish and then into panko mixture, shaking off extra. Turn heat down to medium, and gently lay fish into pan ensuring that each piece has space surrounding it. Fry gently until underside is browned, about 2 minutes per side, turning down heat if needed to prevent browning too quickly. Flip and brown other side, about 2 minutes. Place fish in another dish and serve with vegetables, yogurt sauce, and pita pockets.

In Search of Perfect Pizza Crust, Part 1

My first attempt at homemade pizza crust, circa summer 2007.

I'm really digging the shot of my former kitchen, pre-IKEA makeover. I am spoiled rotten now with my walls of storage and my stove with four working gas burners. This lovely cooktop above had one reliable burner, but when you turned it on the back burner warmed too. Didn't seem to matter much at the time. I still cooked like mad back then.

Bread Bake-Off

Well, we had three good months with our pizza/bread stone, and nearly constant bread baking before this happened:

Yikes. Seemed to be the result of a high temperature pizza. (This shot is after I wrangled a yummy dinner off the stone, of course.) More on pizza in a future post, and my quest for the perfect crust.

So - what to do with all my bread dough and a broken stone?

The kids and I staged a bread bake-off, using one dough and two baking methods. We made the European Peasant Bread from Artisan Bread in 5. Not a favorite, incidentally. I guess I like my breads to have either the creamy chew of an all-white bread or the wholesome nuttiness of a whole-grain bread. That in-between range seems bland and indecisive.

Nevertheless, on to the bake-off...

Bread Baking Continues

The adventures in bread baking continue over here. Here is the Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from this book. Our favorite version of this recipe uses white whole-wheat flour and soy margarine. The latter ingredient was new to me since I headed on a non-dairy path. (Incidentally, my willpower could only go so far, and after 2 1/2 months I am back on the dairy wagon - and lovin' my cheese!) The texture of this bread is smooth, and it toasts beautifully. I love the nutty smell of toasted whole wheat bread. It goes so well with a spread of Bonne Maman strawberry preserves. Note that this is not a 100% whole grain bread; about 1/3 of the flour is white. This dough is also enriched with eggs and sweetened with honey. We love this but some may find that too rich or too flavorful for an everyday sandwich bread. King Arthur offers an alternative 100% whole wheat recipe without eggs, which I haven't tried yet.

I am still taken with the master bread recipe from this book. As of today, March 12, we still haven't bought bread at the store, other than bagels. I've even done a few calculations to make sure I'm not going underwater in this bread madness, and it's certainly working in our favor. I typically make 3 loaves from one batch of the master recipe (rather than the four suggested - we burn through this quickly). Each loaf costs me approximately $.30 to make. A similar loaf at Trader Joe's costs $2.99!

Here I shaped mini-boules of the master dough to make rolls for salmon cakes.

Salmon Cakes

adapted from The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger

3 slices of whole wheat bread (I use homemade, but the fresher the better)

2 7-oz cans salmon

1 large egg

2-3 scallions, chopped

1/2 red pepper, finely diced

ground black pepper to taste

1 1/2 tsp olive oil

With a food processor, whir the bread to fine crumbs (should be moist). Stir together flaked salmon, egg, scallions, red pepper, black pepper and bread crumbs until well-combined. Shape into 6-8 patties (my kids like little ones).

Warm the oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Cook the patties for several minutes until slightly browned and crisp; flip to brown the other side.

Serve on buns with mayo or tzatziki or over greens.

My Bread Baking Apprentice

Still no store-bought bread around here... So I must give an update on what we've tried from our favorite bread books.

This bread was the start of it all.

And this comes from a book devoted to soups, of all things: Love Soup: 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes from the Author of The Vegetarian Epicure

In the intro to her chapter on breads, Anna Thomas mentions her delight with no-knead bread recipes, including those from Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. So after enjoying Thomas' delicious Three-Grain loaf above, I gave the Hertzberg/Francois website a peek, and making my own bread became an instant obsession.

I've made the master recipe from their original book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking with perfect success every time. And trust me when I say I have a lot of interruptions, especially from my little apprentice. This is perfect success, despite letting the dough rise too long, forgetting to steam the bread or slash the top, neglecting to preheat while my little loaf is rising... Ah. I love perfection on my own terms. This is truly delicious white bread, the kind you drool over when it arrives at your restaurant table. (I did used to drool over bread, in my former life, when I could go out to eat occasionally.) We generally keep a tub of this dough in the fridge and turn it into a boule (round loaf) or rolls or ciabatta sprinkled with salt and rosemary. Mmm, mmm.

But we always have a refrigerated tub of multigrain (Three-Grain above) or whole wheat bread dough also. The master recipe from their follow-up book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients, also rocks. Just yesterday I threw the ingredients together in this tub.

I let it rise while I cleaned up my apprentice's fine work.

Two hours later, I had a tub of dough with a serious rise and minimal work involved.

Then I shaped my loaf and let it rise for 40 minutes, and felt awfully full of myself after remembering to slash the top.

I even remembered to steam the oven during a 30-minute bake, which produced this gorgeous crust and just the right accompaniment for a hearty stew. Who needs to go out to dinner, right?

Happy New Decade!

What in the hey-ho have we been up to for the past six weeks, you might ask? I think I was caught in that December vortex, the one that hits exactly on December 1st, and you find yourself somewhere around January 5th or 6th, wondering where the past month has gone while standing amid dusty Christmas decorations waiting to be boxed and garaged and eyeing the pile of half-finished thank-you notes that by some law of childhood must involve hours of feuding and griping and avoiding. Yeah. So that's where we've been!

We had a relaxing, travel-free holiday season, safe at home where baby could attempt to choke on our own tree ornaments rather than an unlucky grandma's.

Need a new project for 2010?

Check these books out. I ordered them for myself the day after Christmas on Amazon. (No, that was not part of the save-every-spare-penny plan that is really starting to get on my nerves, but what's the big deal - only 12 more months to go!) So, here's the update with these books. I love to cook and spend a bit of every day doing so. Adding an extra few minutes ONE day a week to mix bread dough is nothing! And I actually haven't bought a loaf of bread yet in 2010. How about that? The authors claim that making your own bread will cost about $.40 a loaf. Photos will follow soon. If I can get any before these loaves are devoured... Seriously. I've made several loaves to give to friends, but then discover some little or big fingers have been involved in using the bread knife...

And make your life easier by picking up these below as well. (I've already priced checked them for you - this is the best deal.) Only if you think you might really do this bread-baking thing. They're way too nice for soaking poopy clothes or building sandcastles or collecting expired batteries...

Yes, conspicuously there are no holiday photos here. Hmm. Have to work on that. Sure hope we weren't so relaxed we forgot to take any... The memories were good though. Lots of fun with Legos and new books and Nerf guns and a sewing project and squishy blocks and that dresser-top organizer/valet that Steve will probably never use... It was a good one this year :)

Wishing everyone lots of health, happiness, and good fortune for 2010!