Saturday, March 2, 2013

Home Made Pizza

Aiya I know I know, it's been a month and a half since my last blog entry.  However I'm finding that food blogging is like new year's resolutions.  If you fall off the wagon, don't give up.  Just find a way to get that next blog entry in and move on from there.

I want to get more into bread making.  I tried to make my own multigrain loaf before and it was a diaster.  I thought trying pizza dough would be an easier way to break into making bread.  Heheh get it?  Break bread.



Ingredients
1 package of active yeast
1 cup of warm water
1 teaspoon of honey
3 cups of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt



First thing you do is combine the yeast, the warm water, and the honey.  Let it stand and it will start to bloom.


What does it mean for it to bloom?  The yeast will feed off the honey and stimulated by the warm water will activate.  You can see bursts of cloudy gas pop up for about 10 min.  It's actually quite interesting to look at!


Dump in a cup of flour, the olive oil, and the salt.  Start mixing and then add a 2nd cup of flour until it starts pulling away from the side of the bowl.  Then dump out on a floured countertop.
Here you can see the dough sitting in the third cup of flour on it.  Basically you just grab portions of the dough, fold it over and using your palm of your hand press it down.  Rotate the dough a bit and keep going until the dough feels smooth and elastic.


Form the dough into a little ball and then place in a greased bowl.  Cover with a damp dish towel and place in a warm place for 40 min.  I turned on the warm setting on my oven and then turned it off just prior putting the bowl in it.

Boom 3 times it's size.  Pretty amazing isn't it?

Dump the dough back onto a floured countertop and flatten it down a bit.  For little individual sized portions, divide the dough into 4 parts.  Then roll them each into little balls.  Put it back into the warm area.  Here it is after the dough balls rose again.

Take one of the little pizzas and press it and stretch it down to form the pizza dough base.

For my first pizza I tried to make the classic italian Margherita.  It's a very simple: sauce, buffalo mozzarella and basil.  Put it on a cornmeal dusted sheet pan.

Bake in a preheated oven at 450 F for 10 min.

For my second pizza I tried to make it into a stromboli sandwich.  The sandwich is basically a pizza folded in half.
















Yum!  Ooey Gooey goodness!















Here's the website where I got the dough recipe from: http://foodwishes.blogspot.ca/2009/07/wolfgang-pucks-famous-california-pizza.html