Now that I finally figured out how to use my pizza stone (you're supposed to preheat it with the oven, which I had somehow never realized until recently, which is why I always wondered why people thought pizza stones were so great--but now I think they're great too!) we've been eating lots of pizza. We love it topped with Mom's garden tomatoes and my own fresh basil. Here is my favorite dough recipe. It's great with whole wheat flour, or half white/half wheat, too.
Tomato and Basil Pizza
Dough:
2 T. instant yeast
2 C. warm water
1 T. salt
3 T. olive oil, plus more for brushing crust
4-5 cups flour
Toppings:
Mozzarella cheese
Fresh tomatoes (Romas are good)
coarse salt
fresh basil, chopped
Preheat oven to 425 degrees, with pizza stone on lowest rack. (It's good if the stone can preheat for a half hour or more.)
Mix first 4 ingredients, then add flour and knead until dough forms a ball and isn't sticky anymore. Let rise anywhere from 10 min. (if you didn't plan ahead) to an hour (if you did), then roll out onto a cornmeal-dusted pizza peel or cookie sheet. The cornmeal should be spread thick enough that the dough won't stick.
Brush dough with olive oil, then top with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and sliced fresh tomatoes. (Add other toppings too, if desired.) Sprinkle lightly with coarse salt. Slide pizza off of pizza peel onto hot pizza stone in oven. (This is tricky, but Sam and I working together can do it quite well.) Bake for 10-12 minutes at 425, until cheese is bubbly and brown-spotted. After you take it out of the oven, sprinkle generously with chopped basil.
Mmmm! Delicious!
6 comments:
Hi Marilyn,
Your blog looks pretty nice, though I note there is a dearth of responses, so I thought I would try to remedy that. Here goes...
This recipe sure looks good but I was wondering--what exactly is a pizza peel? Do I *need* one of those? :) Philip and I love all the different kinds of pizza we've tried at CPK (Thai, alfredo, fresh veggie, BBQ chicken) and I would like to adapt pizza-making to my cooking style. Have you ever frozen this dough? I was wondering if one could par-bake (sp?) a bunch of crusts, wrap them up and use them like those bolboi(sp?) crusts I see in the store (but they would be whole-wheat and better and stuff like that). Then, you could just take them out of the freezer, toss the toppings on and bake until the cheese melts and it is heated through. So, the day you are actually eating the pizza, it maybe takes 10-15 minutes. And the mess of the dough is infrequent because you make big batches. What do you think? I have been thinking about doing this for a while...we love pizza, but I just am not home enough to make it. And, the store stuff is unhealthy and often makes me sick (I think it might be the sausage.). We miss 5-buck pizza...that place was great.
Well, maybe I will just have to try this when we get back. I have a couple of pizza stones, from wedding gifts, that I haven't used since we lived in Utah and I had more time to bake and make messes.
Well, I better go. Hope you are enjoying your summer.
Allison
Allison,
I don't know the answer to most of your questions, but a pizza peel looks like a flat wooden paddle that you use for transfering the pizza after you prepare it. Before Marilyn got one we used an air-bake cookie sheet instead because it didn't have a rim to get in the way. The only problem with the cookie sheet was that the pizza dough _really_ stuck to it, so we had to put lots of corn meal under it first. The pizza peel seems better in that respect, except it's not quite big enough to make a very large pizza.
(What I was meaning to say was no, you don't need a pizza peel if you have something else that you think will make the transfer work)
Allison,
Thanks for being one of the only people to leave a comment. :) And that's right, I don't think you really need a pizza peel. Anything that will work to transfer pizza to the stone. (With enough cornmeal, any pan should be fine. Or a cutting board?) And I think your frozen pizza idea is great. I've never tried pre-baking the crusts, but I have tried freezing bread dough in loaf shapes and then thawing and baking. That works pretty well. You could bake the dough for 5 minutes or something, just enough to stop it rising. Then freeze a bunch. Sounds good! Maybe I'll try that too.
I've read that these pizza stones are really good for baking (store-bought) frozen pizzas, so I assume your method would work equally well. And I like the idea of experimenting with different styles of pizza. We've tried pizza with lots of vegetables from the garden, or with asparagus and gouda cheese (mmm!), or with feta cheese, artichokes, and tomatoes. My favorite kind at CPK is the one with salad greens, caramelized pears and gorgonzola. That might be hard to duplicate, though. :)
Anyway. Good idea! I think the pizza stone will really help it to work, because of the good way it cooks the crust. Hopefully it will eliminate the sogginess that I can imagine happening with frozen pizza.
Let me know if this works! (and have fun on your trip!)
Marilyn
Sam and Marilyn,
Thanks for the responses. I think I will try this when we get back. (Whenever Philip sits down to pizza, he just grins and grins...it's kind of funny. I think it is because it is the perfect food for "chomping." When I asked him what kind of food he liked while we were dating he said, "anything I can chomp into.") Do you think that preheating the oven with the stone in it is enough heating time?
I don't think I have tried that CPK pizza; it sounds interesting. It is hard to imagine cooking salad--was that put on after the cooking? I'll have to look up CPK's recipes. I know they published a book...maybe the library has it.
Thanks again,
Allison
Allison,
I like to think of Philip "chomping" into things. :) I've read that the pizza stone does well when preheated for quite a long time. An hour or more, even, although I don't think you _have_ to. So you could just start heating it right when you start making the dough.
I think the salad is put on _after_ the pizza is cooked, because it doesn't taste hot or anything. You would think it would be really weird, but it's SO good.
Bye!
Marilyn
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