Topless is not for Pizza

I talked about crust now we need to top the pizza, if we don't it's just bread (nothing wrong with bread but it's not pizza).  For traditional American pizza you need to start with the red, take your marinara that you made earlier (I just know you are playing along with me here) and take a couple of teaspoons full, dump them in the middle and spread it out to the very edge.  Feel free to add more but do it a little at a time as too much sauce can kill a pizza. 

Next contemplate cheese.  Mozzarella is great for it's melting and browning ability.  Your basic choices are fresh, smoked processed/packaged and processed shredded.  You can slice or shred your cheese if it comes whole (to shred freeze the cheese for about 1/2 to 1 hour to make it easy to shred) or you can just do slices of your chunk.  Don't over cheese you still want to see some red through the cheese or you will end up with a gooey mess that is hard to handle (still tastes good but it is a logistical mess).

Now for other toppings (these can go over or under the cheese it's really your choice).  Since our ovens don't get to 600 degrees like pizza ovens it is always best to pre-cook your home pizza topping with a few exceptions (mainly tomatoes as they will turn to mush under the heat).  I prefer savory combinations usually involving onions.  My all time favorite being onions green peppers and pepperoni.  But onion mushrooms and bacon works great too.  Again don't over top judicial restraint is key to the pizza.

Once you get the crust going there's nothing wrong to do with a pizza, don't like red sauce base?  Use olive oil and spices or carmelized onions, or alfredo sauce.  You can even omit a sauce all together.  Want to use a sauce and toppings and no cheese?  No problem you just can't do it wrong you can only do it so you like it or don't like it.  When you think about it it's like a sandwich, you can put together a combo you don't like but it's still a pizza.

Flat out delicious

America's favorite food is Pizza and it's unfortunately not a great homemade standard.  Why?  becuase of the specialized equipment needed for a great crust.  You can buy bread and make use it as a crust for pizza but it's not the same because the recooking can over dry the bread and not cook the toppings enough to give you a just from the pizza oven bubbly brown yumminess.  So we will first attack the crust.

If you've been reading this blog, you've read about my adventures with no knead bread.  Well for those of us who don't have the time or desire to abuse our dough here's a no knead pizza dough.
3.5 cups of flour
1 1/3rd cups of water
2/3rds tsp of salt
2/3rds tsp of sugar
2 tbsp of yeast (or 2 packets)

Here we are going for a faster rise than with our bread dough so we use sugar to jumpstart the yeast here. So dump all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir, add the water and stir.  You want this to totally combine and be just slightly tacky to the touch.  Cover with a damp towel and let rise for 2 hours at room temperature (or in the fridge for a day.  This is enough for 2 pizzas.

Now for the special hardware.  Pizzas are cooked on stones in very hot ovens but our home ovens have racks and just don't get as hot.  Our ovens also average the temperature like a home AC unit.  If you set to 75 and the house is 80 the ac will chill the place to about 73-74 and then let it rise to about 76-77 before kicking in again.  Your stove does the same thing but has a wider temp range.  For our pizza we need even heat so the top and bottom cook at the same time.  We need a trip to the hardware store.  So measure your bottom oven rack. Now go to the hardware store....

What you want is unglazed terra cotta tiles.  You can buy a pizza stone but they are pricy, unglazed terra cotta is cheap and you just need enough to fill the space that you measured before.  If you need to cut tiles for a good fit, make sure the cut ends go against the oven walls.  Now place a double or triple layer of foil on the bottom rack of your oven and then place the tiles on top of it.  If you can get a piece to cover the whole (or most of it) rack then great otherwise you will need to butt the tiles against each other.  The foil will catch any stray flour or cornmeal bits and keep your oven clean.  Temperature should be 400 - 500 depending on your oven and how thick you like your crust (thinner crust hotter oven). 

So why do we do this?  Ceramics are a poor insulator, they absorb heat slowly and release it in the same way, slowly.  So we've created a floor for the pizza which will even out the heating of our oven giving us even heat for cooking the crust evenly and melting the top consistently.  Because these stones heat more slowly than the rest of the oven the pre-heat time will be longer so prepare for that, also give the oven an extra 10 minutes after the beep to be sure they are ready.

Lastly you can leave these stones in the oven permanently and it will not harm a thing so you don't need to constantly take them out and put them back in.

Marinara is good enough for me.

The tomato sauce is a staple in the house.  If you have it on hand that is.  Most of us buy jars and keep them handy.  This isn't a bad thing so long as you remember it is a base but it's not really all purpose enough for me.

Here's my sauce.
1 lg can of tomato paste
2 tomato paste cans full of chicken broth
garlic powder
salt to taste
1 lg onion finely diced
2 lg cans of (pureed not crushed) tomatos
1 lg can of diced tomatos drained
Italian spice mix

Basically it's a mix it all together type of deal.  I start with the paste and chicken broth and combine it well with a wisk. Then dump everything else in except the seasonings.  Add seasonsings to taste and be careful as you can not take spice away from a dish.  Simmer on the stove for two hours, in a crock on high for 4, or in a crock on low for 8-12.  This is all depending on your situation.  You will end up with about a gallon of the red for around 10-12 dollars.  After it's cooled I ladle into the disposable tupperware and freeze.
 You can substitute fresh herbs for dried, chopped garlic for powder and fresh tomatoes for canned so have fun with it.  (btw using a food mill or a box grater on fresh tomatoes will give you a puree no problem no peeling necessary but if you use a grater be sure to remove seeds).

What to do with the sauce?  Well it's not bad as it is, but if you simmer it with mushrooms, meatballs, sausages, fish, shrimp, beef, pork, chicken, venison, etc it takes on some of the characteristics of what you cook it with and you get a whole new flavor for the price of putting it on the stove and just dumping stuff in it.  One great tip is to add cheese to your sauce as it melts in and flavors the whole sauce and serves as a thickener as well (parmesan is classic but try asiago for a real treat).

NOTE: NEVER BUY GRATED CHEESE, it's crap.  The closest you should get is the shredded parmesian in a bag.  If it looks like powder leave it on the shelf.   You can powder it in a blender/processor when you get home if you need to and you will get much better flavor and no silica (sand) to prevent clumping.  When you chop something up so fine all the oils inside which give it aroma will evaporate out, you need chunks of some sort to hold in the flavor.

Five minute dinner or take that Rachel Ray

With work & kids you don't always have the time you would like to prepare a home cooked meal but here's one I did the other night on the spur of the moment.

Knowing time was short I picked up some cherry tomatoes on the way home.  We also had a pound of langastinos (think of shrimp that have a lobster texture and taste) steamed and pealed that I picked up on sale from the store a day before.  Having children we also pretty much always have some cooked pasta on hand.  So in a frying pan I melted a tbsp of butter and added an equal amount of olive oil (combining gives you a healthier mix and adding the oil also raises the smoking point of the butter). Once the oil was warm I tossed in the langastinos and let them start to warm (they were already cooked so I didn't want to dry them out another reason for the oil).  Then I tossed in a couple of hands full of pasta (we actually used alphabets but any small pasta like orzo or ditalini would really work here).  Once the pasta was warm I tossed in the tomatoes and added some salt and pepper and garlic powder (all to taste so be sure to taste as you go).  At the very end before the tomatoes got mushy (really hate mushed tomatoes) I added in some fresh time leaves, tossed the pan once or twice and dumped it all on a plate and served with my fresh semolina bread.  Total cooking time 5 minutes.

A balanced healthy meal chock full of proteins, veggies and some starch (not much actually) and it was full of flavor and even the boy gobbled it down.

Swaps for the langastinos could be shrimp, bay scallops or small chunks of a firm fish like tilapia or cod.  Instead of tomatoes you can use any veggie at all just about (except for Brussels sprouts and okra which are against my religion).  In short this can be thousands of separate dishes.  To pack in more flavor vary the herbs or even add sauteed mushrooms, onions or even crumbled bacon.

You can even do the whole meal during one commercial break of 30 minute meals.

Ahhhhhhh coffee.

I was off the caffeine kick for years.  Then we had kids and didn't have sleep.  Something needed to give and it ended up being the absence of coffee.  Now to me coffee is God's worst bit of false advertising.  It smells like heaven but since I have a problem with bitter it tastes horrible.  So I wanted to fix that without spending 5$ a day on some Seattle based over glopped cup o-joe.

Flavor is the key.  Adding spices directly to the coffee means you are feeling the grit of the spice as you drink.  So how to rectify?  Well since we are brewing the coffee why not brew the spices as well?  Experimentally we added cinnimon and nutmeg to the filter with the coffee.  It was heaven.  You get a smooth subtle flavor that goes throughout the brew and will elivate any cup to new heights.   Granted we use inexpensive brand name coffee for this but it's really good.  Some other suggestions include anise, vanilla beans, orange peels (zest only none of the white pith) or any other flavoring that you like the taste of. 

No recipe for this as it's an experimental thing.  Try it though and you will be amazed.  Don't forget to cream and sugar to taste.

Ben and who?

Frogurt time again (Fro-Yo is a trademark of a hippy company up north so I won't use it).  I have two favorite flavors of ice cream and they are peanut butter and chocolate (basically chocolate with ribbons of peanut butter frozen within) and Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia.  Now I have a ton of yogurt at home and cherries, homemade vanilla extract, chocolate and sugar so I can take a swipe at one of my favorite flavors.

1 quart + a tad of homade yogurt
1 cup of sugar
2 tsp home made vanilla extract
1/2 cup of 1/2& 1/2  (yes it's ironic but i want a creamier product)
1/2 bar of chocolate cut into small chunks
about 10 cherries cut into 1/8 ths (if big like the ones we got)

Mix everything except for the sugar, chocolate & cherries together.  Taste.  If too sour add about 1/4th of the sugar.  Taste.  Repeat as necessary (switch to tablespoons though).  When done to your standards chill for a few hours to a few days.  Assemble your ice-cream maker.  Start the churning and add in your mix.  About 2/3rds the way through add in the chocolate and cherries and let the churning finish.  When done put in containers and freeze.  I call it Cherries Santana so I don't get into any trademark battles.

Awesome Semolina bread.

If you go back to "bread that doesn't suck", you will find the no knead bread recipe.  I wasn't totally satisfied with how it turned out so I tried again.  This time I made sure the dough was wet and sticky and fairly loose for a bread dough (if you are used to the kneading method.  I also adjusted the temperature to 450 from 475 in the hopes of a lighter crust.

Basic recipe was 2.5 cups of bread flour plus .5 cups of semolina flour (aka pasta flour).  One packet of active dry yeast, 1& 1/2 tsp salt and 1 & 1/3 cups of water.  Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and then mix in the water.  You want the mix not tight like you were going to hand knead but a bit loose and pretty sticky.  Cover the dough and let it rise in a cool dark place for 18 hours.  When the 18 hours are up form the dough into a ball and place seam side down on a floured towel and cover.  The the dough rise for about 2 hours and twords the end place a heavy pot (with lid) in the stove and preheat to 450 degrees. 

Put the dough seam side down in the pot and cover.  Bake for 1/2 hour then remove the cover and bake for an additional 15 minutes.


That's it, takes almost a whole day but involves less than 10 minutes work and it is so awesome.