Pizza Night and the squishy dough balls

To celebrate National Pizza Month, we had pizza night at my sister’s house the other day. I brought some of Peter Reinhart’s Country Pizza Dough from the Pizza Quest site and some whole wheat dough. I made the dough balls the day before so all I had to do was take them out of the refrigerator and let them rest in a baking pan while in transit to my sister’s house. 

Of course, things don’t always work out the way you plan. On the way to my sister’s house, the dough balls slid on the seat of my car and squished together.  I had to reshape them before making the pizzas.  At least the pan didn’t slide off the seat. That happened to me on Easter one year when I was transporting an unbaked braided Easter Bread to the family get together. But, that’s another story.

Needless to say, I didn’t take any photos of the dough balls. The dough was sort of a mess when I got to my sister’s house, but I just reshaped the balls and let them rest while the baking stone was preheating.  Then I spread out the pizzas on parchment paper and par baked the dough. Everything turned out okay.

My niece and her children were there so I made individual cheese and pepperoni pizzas for the kids. I let the kids top their own pizzas and that turned out to be a big hit. Payton enjoyed posing for the camera with her pizza masterpiece.

 

She also enjoyed eating her pizza.

 

Caleb had already finished his pizza, but he didn’t want to miss out on a photo op, so here he is enjoying his dessert. 

 

I made Pizza Margherita for the adults using the Country Pizza Dough. This is the pizza before it was baked.  It’s topped with pizza sauce, herbs, mozzarella cheese, and tomatoes and basil from my garden.

 

Basil shrivels up after it’s baked so the before-baked photo looks better than the after-baked photo, but the pizza tasted really good.  I almost didn’t get any it went so fast.

 

I had some Tartine Whole Wheat dough left from the bread I made for World Bread Day so I decided to bring some for the pizza party. The Tartine Whole Wheat Bread is an artisan-style loaf so I thought it might do well as a pizza dough. The dough didn’t have any olive oil in it so I rubbed olive oil on the top of the dough before I par baked it.

The last pizza of the night was topped with pizza sauce, tomatoes, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, pepperoni, fresh basil and dried herbs.

 

It was actually pretty good considering the dough was a whole wheat bread dough and not a pizza dough per se. I could taste the whole wheat flavor but it wasn’t overpowering.  I thought the flavors blended together really well.  Everyone else enjoyed it as well.

 

Thanks for joining me in the bread baking blog.  I hope you enjoyed my pizza party. I love pizza so this was a good opportunity to enjoy some.  Not that I need an excuse.

Happy Baking!

Cathy

 

Here are some resources for making pizza:

• How to make pizza
• Pizza Recipes
• Pizza Cookbooks
• Pizza Ingredients
• Pizza Mixes
• Pizza Supplies

Country Pizza for National Pizza Week

It’s National Pizza Week!  Have you celebrated it yet? There’s still time. Not that you need an excuse to have pizza, but you wouldn’t want to pass up this opportunity now would you?  I didn’t think so.

Instead of going out for pizza Friday night, I recommend that you make your own. I even have the recipe for you.  It’s a delicious Country Pizza Dough that was created by Peter Reinhart and is featured on Pizza Quest. 

In case you haven’t heard about Pizza Quest, here is an excerpt from the Vision Statement: 

Pizza Quest is a site dedicated to the exploration of artisanship in all forms, wherever we find it, but especially through the literal and metaphorical image of pizza. As we share our own quest for the perfect pizza we invite all of you to join us and share your journeys too...

You’ll definitely want to check out the Pizza Quest site. They have some great videos as well delicious pizza recipes.

 

Country Pizza Topped with Veggies

You can find the recipe for the Country Pizza Dough here.

This dough is great!  It’s easy to make and it’s transportable. My sister and I visited my mom for her birthday and I brought this Country Pizza Dough with me.  I made it the night before and placed it in the refrigerator overnight.  You can use the dough anywhere from 6 hours to three days after you put it in the refrigerator. 

You’re supposed to pull the dough out of the refrigerator two hours prior to when you plan to bake it and shape it into balls. My mom lives about an hour and a half away from me so I let the dough balls rest during the drive and they were ready to go when I got to her house.  The recipe calls for five 8-ounce pizzas, but I decided to make them bigger so I made four 10-ounce pizzas.

 

When I got to my mom’s house, I preheated the oven (with a pizza stone in it) at the highest setting (500 degrees), Then, I parbaked the pizza dough for a few minutes and spread pizza sauce on it.

 

Then I topped it with lot’s of veggies. My sister doesn’t eat onions or peppers so I made one half with onions, red & green peppers, and a little bit of spinach and broccoli and the other half with just spinach and broccoli.

 

And then I added the cheese.  Mmmm…

 

I made another pizza with the works.  I was afraid the dough might collapse under the weight of all of the veggies, but it didn’t.

 

I finished baking each pizza for another 10 minutes or so until the cheese was melted.

This is the half and half pizza.  Both pizzas were very tasty.  We also had a salad so we definitely got our veggies in that day.  Yum!

 

Thanks for joining me in my pizza adventure.  Now, go make some pizza!

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy