Leaning Vegetarian

Posts Tagged ‘pizza’

Pizza is one of the easiest things to make for a combined vegetarian/meat meal without having to cook or prepare anything separately – the guys can have their ham or pepperoni, and we can have our cheese and veggies.

This pizza dough that can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days, and in the freezer for up to 3 months.  Once again, I’m pulling the recipe from thefreshloaf.com though this one originated in Peter Reinhart’s American Pie as the Neo-Neapolitan.

Mix everything together in a large bowl – I’m adding a dab of milk and slightly more oil than it calls for since I like chewy crusts.  Proof the yeast if you prefer; I’ve had fine luck with adding it directly to the liquid and mixing the flour in right away.  Turn out on to your favorite kneading surface and knead (or use your dough hook) – this will be sticky; a dough scraper/spatula is useful.

I’ve had some requests for pizza this afternoon, so I’m going to leave half the dough to rise for an hour or so at room temperature. I cut the other half in two pieces, slathered them with olive oil, and I’ll put those in the fridge for later this week.  (I should’ve made more so I could put some in the freezer and I wouldn’t have to make any next weekend.)

I like the rustic type crust, so I’m just going to stretch and pat it by hand. Feel free to use a rolling pin if you’d prefer a thinner or more uniform crust.  Rolling and filling it on parchment paper makes the transfer to the oven a lot less precarious – I’ve had breads fold over into disappointing shapes when they stick to the pan I’d been finishing them on, even with cornmeal.  One of these days I’ll practice enough to be able to toss it into a round, but today’s attempt resulted in a lot of fingers poked through the dough or shapes that could not even charitably be called round.

Hopefully this summer I’ll have tomatoes (or, failing that, I’ll hit the farmers’ markets for some local Grainger county tomatoes) and can work on a good pizza sauce recipe.  For now, I’m going to (mumble) cheat and use store-bought sauce and cheese, and some sliced ham for our meat-eaters.

I still don’t have a pizza stone or tiles, so I flip our largest cookie sheet over and use it in the oven on the next-to-lowest rack setting, letting it preheat with the oven.  I’ve got the oven at its highest setting but if yours will go to 500°, great. I pull the far corner of the parchment into the oven to slide it from my working pan onto the hot pan.  The cooking time will vary depending on the size and thickness of your pizza and toppings, so watch it after about five minutes and go from there.  I pulled this out at seven minutes to check, and the bottom was still too pale for my taste, so I removed it from the pan and parchment and set it directly on the rack.

A word of warning: at least two of us burned our mouth when this came out of the oven; be more patient than we were and let it cool a bit.  I’m going to try this dough with a topping of olive oil and a dusting of parmesan for bread sticks as well. I’ll post an update when I do.