Pizza!

Yum!  Pizza!

Our daughter-in-law recently made a pizza dinner for us - and it was delicious.  I have made pizza in the past but usually bought the crust and used purchased sauce as well.  She inspired me to make it from scratch and with as many home-grown ingredients as possible.  With that in mind, I asked her for her dough recipe:

2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp instant yeast
3/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp oil

Mix, knead for 8 minutes.  Let rise 3 - 4 hours.

Armed with my DIL's recipe, I prepared for a pizza dinner tonight.  For toppings, in addition to purchased chicken and mushrooms, the sauce, tomatoes, onions and peppers would all come from our garden.

Prepared toppings

I used my mandolin to slice the onions, Anaheim pepper and tomatoes thinly.  Mushrooms were sliced by hand.

Frozen pasta sauce from last year

The sauce was made and frozen last year.  To make it, I roasted tomatoes, onions, carrots herbs and spices together and then pureed them, freezing in usable batches.  Find the recipe here.

Chicken thigh meat sautéing

I sautéed the thinly sliced chicken, seasoning it with salt and pepper, then set it aside until needed.

I made the dough in a double batch.  Once it had risen and been punched down, I cut it in half and froze one portion for another time.  I will thaw it in the fridge overnight and rise it again before using.

The oven was set to 450F with our pizza stone in it.  When it was nearly up to heat, I rolled out the dough.

Pizza on the stone and ready for the oven

When the buzzer went off, I pulled out the stone and put the pizza shell on top, then quickly smeared on about 3 dessert spoons of sauce, then topped it with grated Mozzarella cheese.  Toppings were arranged and a small amount of Mozzarella added as a finish.

The resulting pizza was definitely a good one, but there is always room for improvement.

Next time, I'll bake it at the 450F temperature.  When I went to put the pizza in the oven, I noticed that it was no longer at full temperature.  When heating up, the broiler element goes on in my oven and I didn't want to risk burning the top of the pizza so knocked the oven back to 425F.  I'll watch for that next time!

I will also roll it thinner at the edges.  The outside crust was a little too thick for my taste.  I'll also bake it a little longer.

Nevertheless, the pizza was a success and a dish we will certainly make again.