Feb 3 to Feb 5 Kitchen Sink Pizza

Feb. 3   Chicken Chili Soup and Cheese Quesadillas
Feb. 4   Home made pizza with italian sausage, meatball, feta, red onion, tomato
Feb 5    Spent the day sick in bed so I don't care what they ate. I eventually ate a bowl of whole
             wheat linguine with a bit of olive oil, chili flakes, lots of salt and pepper and a bit of cheese


Thursday I was craving chili but had to make a soup so I compromised by trying a chili flavoured soup and ended up with something thinner than chili but a bit thicker than a typical soup. It was really good and with a quesadilla, it was a really filling dinner.

Friday, I wasn't feeling well (this is becoming a trend because I have not really been feeling well for well over a week now) and after working a few hours in the morning, I wasn't feeling like going out for any groceries. I had a scrap of this and a chunk of that but couldn't think of anything to cook for supper and was dangerously close to take out thai.




Then I was perusing tastespotting and saw a couple nice pictures of pizza and thought "if only I had pizza dough, I could do that"

What was I thinking? I don't need to have dough already because I can whip up a half batch of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day olive oil bread in, well, five minutes!

I threw together some dough, I laid back down on the couch and napped until it was time to pick up Little Shack from school. I had a ball of buffalo mozzarella, some grated parmesan in the freezer, 1 mild italian sausage, 2 meatballs, 1 small plum tomato, a small chunk of red onion and a small chunk of feta. Just to be safe I defrosted a tiny bag of leftover roast chicken that I had probably intended to feed the dog at some point because it was such a small portion.

What other thing could you make from that pathetic list of ingredients and feed three people something so delicious that you would happily eat it over and over again?

From the time I grabbed the first ball of dough to roll out until the time I had delicious garbage can pizza on the plate, I think it took about 30 minutes and that includes 15 minutes to pre heat the oven and let the dough rest a bit.

For Kitchen Sink Pizza:

Dough

tomato sauce ( drain a can of whole plum tomatoes and puree just the tomatoes with a good glug of olive oil, add fresh herbs or dried and a clove of chopped garlic and set aside)

cheese and toppings of your choice

cornmeal

Dough 

Makes 4 1lb loaves. This recipe is easily doubled or halved

2 3/4 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbl granulated yeast
1 1/2 tbl salt
1 tbl sugar
1/4 cup  olive oil
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Mix the yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil with the water in a 5-qt bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. I always use my stand mixer with the dough hook.

2. Mix in the flour without kneading, using a large wooden spoon or on low in the stand mixer.

3. Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temperature for about 2 hours. You can use the dough at this point, or refrigerate and use over next 12 days.  If you only want to make 1 pizza, pinch off a grapefruit sized piece of dough to use…keep the remaining covered loosely in the refrigerator. 

Press your ball of dough into a flat disk on a floured board and then you can either pull it out into a thin disk or use a rolling pin. I don't have the knack for this so I use a rolling pin so I can get the dough as thin as possible.

Preheat the oven with a pizza stone to 500F. If you don't have a pizza stone you can preheat a cookie sheet. While your oven is preheating, get all of your pizza elements together and standing by so you can garnish your pizza easily and quickly.

After the dough is rolled out for your pizza, sprinkle cornmeal on the your pizza paddle OR remove the hot cookie sheet and lay the dough onto the hot sheet and garnish quickly. If using a paddle, lay the disk of dough on the cornmeal covered paddle and garnish right on the paddle.

I did:

sauce, mozzarella, sausage, crumbled meatball and chicken, red onion, feta and a final coating of parmesan.

Slide the pizza off the peel onto the hot stone (or return the hot tray to the oven) on the centre rack and cook for 10 to 15 minutes. We like our pizza dough very well done and crispy so I cook them for 15 minutes but any time after 10 minutes is fine. Let it sit for at least five minutes before cutting.

Obviously, the possibilities are endless. Pesto, fresh herbs, any kind of leftover meat or seafood, pretty much any cheese you like, any veggie you like. Technically, I could probably serve pizza every night for the rest of the year and never make two exactly the same way. 


Not that I would do that.

As if.