Monday, August 01, 2011

Pizza: from scratch.

Last night brought the beginning of a new week. Meaning a new Monday. Meaning a new week to try new recipes. I may or may not have taken a little detour to this AWESOME store called T.J. Maxx. You should go. ;) [insert glorious jingle here.] I found this delightful cookbook entitled Energy Food. The title just SCREAMED my name from the clearance shelf. Only beef with the book... it's published in the UK... so more conversions. Just when I thought I was done with those!!!

I decided to try one of the "dynamic dinners" and see how dynamite it turned out.

my pizza with charbroiled vegetables:

ingredients for dough:
14 oz. (1.75 cups) whole wheat flour, plus extra for kneading
1 envelope active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
250 ml (1 cup) warm water
1 Tbs olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
suggested toppings:
bottled tomato sauce
goat cheese
zucchini
bell peppers
eggplant

I decided that the best toppings would be fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, yellow peppers and zucchini. Mainly because those were the available things in the fridge. :)

To make the dough, stir the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt together in a large bowl. Make a well in the center, then stir in the warm water and the pol. Stir to make a soft dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead dough until smooth and elastic. Return the douhg to the rinsed bowl, drizzle with oil, then cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in volume.

Meanwhile, prepare the veggies. A.k.a. heat them in a skillet with (optional) oil. I didn't use any and my veggies turned out fine. The directions in the book are more detailed, but if I can do it without reading it all, you'll be fine too! Remember, the book is British. ;)

Preheat oven to 425 (with baking sheet inside). Not sure why you're supposed to do that, but oh well! It says to split the dough into two balls and make 2 pizzas, but I wanted to just make one, so the dough was thicker and I added a few minutes to the cook time. We'll see if it worked!

Spread dough, roll with rolling pin (which I have yet to locate). Spread with sauce, and top with toppings. I added to mine: authentic Italian sauce, yellow peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and fresh mozzarella. It looks and tastes phenomenal. :)


Bon appetit! ;)

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