No-Knead Pizza Dough and Party for Two

I saw a version of this Pizza on the cover of the March 2012 issue of Bon Appétit and couldn’t wait to try it. It’s made with No-Knead Pizza Dough from Jim Lahey’s new book.

I confess, the main reason I wanted to make this pizza, besides the fact that it looked so good and I wanted to try something new, is because I have a new taste tester that I wanted to impress with my bread-baking prowess. We were texting back and forth one night, and I texted him about the pizza dough and some of the other features in the magazine. After a while, I said “You hungry yet?” and he said, “I know what ur up to silly girl…” 

Well, it worked… He came over to help me make pizza the other night.

As it turns out, my new taste tester is pretty handy in the kitchen. I think he’s a foodie wannabe, but he scoffed at that. At any rate, he was a big help with the pizza. I got pretty distracted as I sometimes (uh, always) do, and he kept me from completely burning the first pizza. I think it was because he was hungry and didn’t want to lose his dinner.  We had fun and the pizza tasted good so that’s what matters.

 

I liked this pizza dough. It was really easy to make. It’s a wet dough which makes it chewy and bubbly. It becomes crispy when baked under the broiler.

No Knead Pizza Dough

Adapted from: Tomato and Stracciatella Pizzas from Bon Appétit, March, 2012

Makes: Six 10” x 12” Pizzas

We made several substitutions to the ingredients suggested in the original recipe mainly because I couldn’t find the ingredients and our taste buds wanted something different.

Ingredients:

• 7 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (1000 grams) plus more for shaping dough
• 4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
• Marinara or crushed tomatoes (I used homemade marinara)
• Mozzarella Cheese, sliced
• Shaved Parmesan Cheese
• Crushed red pepper flakes
• Fresh oregano leaves
• Extra-virgin olive oil

   

Directions:

Making the No-Knead Dough

Whisk flour, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl. While stirring with a wooden spoon (or Danish dough whisk), gradually add 3 cups water; stir until well incorporated. Mix dough gently with your hands to bring it together and form into a rough ball. 

 

Transfer to a large clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  

 

Let dough rise at room temperature (about 72°) in a draft-free area until surface is covered with tiny bubbles and dough has more than doubled in size, about 18 hours (time will vary depending on the temperature in the room). 

Here is the dough after 18 hours.

 

Transfer dough to a floured work surface. Gently shape into a rough rectangle.

 

Divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Working with 1 portion at a time, gather 4 corners to center to create 4 folds. Turn seam side down and mold gently into a ball. Dust dough with flour; set aside on work surface or a floured baking sheet. Repeat with remaining portions. Let dough rest, covered with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel, until soft and pliable, about 1 hour.

 

DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Wrap each dough ball separately in plastic wrap and chill. Unwrap and let rest at room temperature on a lightly floured work surface, covered with plastic wrap, for 2–3 hours before shaping.

 

Making the Pizzas

During the last hour of dough's resting, prepare the oven: Arrange a rack in upper third of oven and place a pizza stone on the rack; preheat oven to its hottest setting, 500°–550°, for 1 hour.

Working with 1 dough ball at a time, dust dough generously with flour and place on a floured work surface. Gently shape dough into a 10"–12" disk.

When ready to bake, increase oven heat to broil. Sprinkle a pizza peel or rimless (or inverted rimmed) baking sheet lightly with flour. I used parchment paper.

I par baked my dough disk for a couple of minutes. Then I removed the parchment paper before adding the toppings.

Place dough disk on prepared peel and spread about 3 Tbsp. crushed tomatoes or marinara over dough. Place mozzarella slices over the top and any other toppings.  We added pepperoni, sliced red onions and green peppers before baking and the rest of the ingredients after it had been baked.

 

Slide pizza from peel onto hot pizza stone. Broil pizza, rotating halfway, until bottom of crust is crisp and top is blistered, 5–7 minutes. Using peel, transfer to a work surface. 

 

Garnish with crushed red pepper flakes, oregano, and olive oil. We also added shaved parmesan cheese. Season to taste with salt. Slice pizza. Repeat, allowing pizza stone to reheat under broiler for 5 minutes between pizzas.

 

I was going to scale down the recipe and only make a couple of dough balls, but then I decided to make all six. I froze three of them for use later, and we made pizza out of the other three balls. We ate one pizza and I sent one home with my friend and kept one for myself to enjoy another day.

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy

Share your Favorite Pizza Recipe for National Pizza Month

It’s National Pizza Month!  To celebrate this delicious occasion, Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast is giving you the chance to win the perfect accessories for making your favorite recipes at home!

I love pizza!  And I know you do too!  So preheat the oven or grill and let’s make some pizza!

Here are the details...

Share your favorite pizza recipes and toppings by visiting the Fleishmann’s "National Pizza Month Promo" tab on their Facebook page.

 

Each week, Fleischmann's will randomly pick 25 winners to receive a free sample of Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast, and one winner will receive $50 worth of pizza-making prizes!

Prizes include:

• Pizza stone
• Pizza wheel
• Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast

 

Don’t forget to visit their Pizza Crust Yeast tab to share your favorite pizza recipes and toppings. Just for participating, you’ll be entered to win a free package of Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast and a pizza baking kit valued at $50!

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy

Grilled Pizza Margherita

I’ve been on a grilling kick so I decided to continue the trend with this Pizza Margherita.  I was supposed to make Focaccia con Formaggio with the rest of the Ciabatta dough (like the other Mellow Bakers did), but I didn’t have any Ricotta Cheese.  Not to mention the fact that my 30+ tomato plants and basil plants have been calling for me to make something with them besides salsa and marinara. So I decided to make use of them and the dough in this pizza.  

I know you’ve been waiting to find out what I planned to do with the other two dough balls from my Grilled Herb Focaccia post so here you go.

 

Grilled Pizza Marguerite Recipe

Makes: 2 pizzas

Dough:

• 2 dough balls (1 pound each) from pizza dough of your choice. I used the rest of the Ciabatta dough from the Grilled Herb Focaccia.
• Extra-virgin olive oil (to spread on the dough before grilling)

 

Toppings:

• Sliced fresh tomatoes (I used heirloom tomatoes from my garden)
• Fresh basil
• Sliced Mozzarella Cheese
• Crushed tomatoes
• Dried thyme and oregano (or your choice of herbs)
• Salt and pepper to taste

 

 

Directions:

Take the dough balls out of the refrigerator and let them warm up to room temperature.  I spread the dough balls out on parchment paper, covered them with plastic wrap and let them rest on the counter while I prepared the grill.

 

I placed a pizza stone on the grates and turned the outside burners of my gas grill to high.  The I closed the lid to let it preheat to at least 450 degrees. The photo is a little fuzzy but you get the picture, right?  I had never used my baking stone on the grill before.  I think I thought it might crack, but then I decided if you could use the baking stone in a 500 degree oven, it should work on the grill, right?

 

I transferred the dough to the grate using a pizza peel. Then I par baked the dough for 5 minutes or so before adding the toppings.  I left the parchment paper on for the first few minutes but then I removed it so the bottom would finish baking.

I forgot to make slits in the dough so it puffed up like a balloon.  It was pretty funny.  I had to carefully make slits with a fork to deflate the dough.

 

I removed the pizza from the grill and added the toppings.  First, I spread it with crushed tomatoes and sprinkled it with thyme and oregano and salt and pepper.  Then I added the sliced mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and basil. 

 

Then I carefully returned the pizza to the grill using a pizza peel and grilled it just until the toppings were cooked and the cheese was melted.  We waited until it cooled just a bit before slicing and eating. We tried to be patient, but it’s really hard when a pizza is just sitting there waiting to be devoured.

 

This grilled pizza was really good.  I forgot to drizzle the dough with the olive oil. I think it would’ve helped the flavor and texture of the dough if I had done that before grilling it; however, my BF said it was great – awesome actually!

I liked the process and how easy it was to grill it.  It tasted good, particularly the tomatoes and the fresh basil. It’s fun to eat fresh from your garden.

 

Mellow Bakers was started by Paul at Yumarama. We’ve been baking breads from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.

 

Thanks for visiting the Bread Experience blog.  I hope you’ll join me again soon.

Happy Baking!
Cathy

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

Pizza in the Forest: HBinFive

Have you ever wanted to just get away from it all?  Away from the hustle and bustle of the city and away from cell phones and laptops and television.  Well, that’s what we did for a couple of days and it was heavenly. 

The Hostel in the Forest is a beautiful retreat in Brunswick, Georgia.  It’s in the city, but off the beaten path.  All sorts of people pass through this forest.  Some come just to relax and get away for awhile.  Other folks, like us, stop here on their way to other destinations, and some decide to stay awhile to be a part of the community, to learn about sustainability, and to reflect on their purpose in this crazy world we live in.

Once you enter the forest, time stands still and life becomes much simpler.  

There are no TVs, or other distractions.

 

Just the wonderful allure of nature. 

Cell phones are banned and if you get caught talking on one, they’ll throw you in the pool.  Or, so they say.  I was never tempted to test fate. 

 

We stayed in Elmo’s Hut for a couple of days and it was wonderful. 

This community porch is usually filled with friendly faces and new friends.  I took this photo when no one was sitting here to protect the serenity of the atmosphere and the privacy of the dear people who visit or live in this peaceful place.

This is the laundry room where you’ll find blankets and sheets and towels.

They are building a Cob oven and I look forward to baking pizza in it one day. This photo is a little bit fuzzy, but if you look closely, you can see the oven in the background.  They decorated the walls with glass bottles.  It’s really neat!

Here’s another shot of the oven.

I didn’t get to bake in the Cob oven yet, but the kitchen staff graciously allowed me to bake pizza in their community kitchen.

The current residents and volunteers at the hostel are trying to live gluten-free and I really wanted to bake the HBinFive gluten-free pizza dough, but I didn’t have time to get all of the ingredients together before we left home. 

Instead, I used the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes Whole Wheat Olive Oil dough that I had mixed up a few days earlier.  No one visiting or living at the hostel at this time was allergic to wheat so they didn’t mind that it wasn’t gluten-free. 

The kitchen was full of people while I was preparing the pizza and I kept forgetting to take pictures of the process, but it sure was fun! It was kind of dark in the kitchen, so some of the pictures are a little bit dark, but I included them so you could get a feel for the atmosphere.

I brought most of my pizza tools with me (because I’m a geek like that), but it was really nostalgic to bake in their kitchen. 

 

My main taste tester cut up all the veggies for me. Don’t they look delicious!

Once the oven was preheated and ready to go,

I placed the pizza on the stone to par bake for a few minutes.

Then, I spread the dough with homemade marinara sauce and veggies and topped it with mozzarella cheese and fresh basil. 

I let the pizza bake for another 5 minutes or so, then took it out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes.

Then, before I knew it, it had disappeared in a flash.  Next time, I’ll bring more dough or bring the ingredients to make more dough.

Everyone that tried the pizza seemed to enjoy it.  They were so surprised that I made the pizza dough by hand.  So, I took the opportunity to extol the virtues of the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes method. 

John, one of the current residents of the hostel, said it was the best pizza he had ever eaten.  I asked him if I could quote him on that and he said “yes!” He even posed for the camera.  John is a fellow bread-baker and we had a great time talking bread.  Thanks John!

To me, this is the beauty of the HBinFive method. I made the whole wheat olive oil dough two days before we left, put it in the refrigerator for two days, then transported it for several hours in a cooler and kept it in the cooler overnight.  When I finally baked the dough, it was three days from the time I had made the dough and it tasted great!

 

I didn’t get the chance to make the gluten-free bread or pizza for the April 15 HBinFive bread braid but I hope to give it a shot for the May 1st bread braid.  I also hope to perfect it for the next time I visit this retreat in the forest.

 

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.  Please check out BigBlackDog to see the April 15th Bread Braid roundup.

Happy Baking!
Cathy

 

About the HBinFive Baking Group

The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the  Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the new HBinFive baking group, check out Michelle's blog.

 

 

Here are some additional bread-making resources:

• Bread Recipes
• Bread Cookbooks
• Bread Making
• Baking Supplies
• Bread Flour
• Bread Mixes

You might enjoy some of the other breads that have been featured in the bread making blog.

Caramelized Red Onion Relish and Pizza

When I saw this month’s tigress can jam choice posted on Small Measure, I thought “what’s an allium?”  Then I found out that the allium family consists of green scallions, chives, scapes, ramps, leeks, husky onions, shallots, and garlic.

So onions are alliums!  Well, why didn’t you just say so?  I like onions so I set out to find the perfect recipe. 

I found several recipes for onion marmalades, chutneys and relish. I couldn’t quite wrap my taste buds around the idea of an onion marmalade yet so I skipped over that one.  I wasn’t ready to make chutney either so I scratched that one off the list – for now.

Then, I found a recipe for onion relish in The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. The relish sounded pretty good, but I wondered what in the world to eat it with!

Just so happens, the authors provided the perfect solution; use it as a pizza topping.  I like pizza so I decided this recipe was the ticket.

Caramelized Red Onion Relish

From The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving 
Makes: 2 cups

Ingredients:

• 2 large red onions, peeled
• 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup dry red wine (I used Shiraz)
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1/8 teaspoon each: salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Slice onions into very thin slices.  Combine onions and sugar in a heavy non-stick skillet.

Cook, uncovered, over medium-high heat for about 25 minutes or until onions turn golden and start to caramelize, stirring frequently.

Stir in wine and vinegar.  Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to low and cook for about 15 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring frequently.

Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Spoon into a clean wide-mouth jar and cool briefly.

Remove hot jars from canner and ladle relish into jars to within 1/2 inch of rim (headspace). I used one pint-size jar.  I had a little bit left over so I refrigerated it to use on the pizza.

Process 10 minutes for half-pint jars or 15 minutes for pint jars.  If you live in a higher altitude or need more detailed instructions on water-bath canning, please refer to the instructions at the National Center for Home Preservation.

 

Caramelized Red Onion & Tomato Pizza

Makes: 24 appetizers (or one medium pizza)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Caramelized Red Onion Relish
• 4 individual pizza crusts (or one medium) I used Artisan Bread in Five Minutes Olive Oil Dough for the crust
• 1 medium tomato, diced (I sliced it instead)
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (or enough to cover the pizza)

Directions:

Divide onion mixture among pizza crust(s), spreading evenly.  Combine tomato and cheese, sprinkle over onion.  Bake in a 350 degrees F. oven for about 10 minutes or until hot and cheese is melted.  Cut each pizza into 6 wedges or however you prefer.

I baked the crust for 5 minutes, then topped it with the onion, tomato and cheese.

I didn’t mix the tomato and cheese.  I just layered the onions, then the tomatoes, then the cheese and baked the pizza another 5 minutes or so until the cheese was melted.

My BF and I had the pizza for dinner rather than as an appetizer. I wasn’t sure how it would taste, but it was really good!  The onions have a slightly sweet fermented flavor that blended really well with the tomatoes and mozzarella cheese.  I added some Italian seasoning to my slice which rounded out the flavor.  My BF added hot sauce to his.

We enjoyed this relish on the pizza, but I also think it would go really well with hamburgers, hotdogs or other types of sandwiches.  Good thing because I have a pint of it to use up.

We're making jams or pickling every month in 2010. For more info, go to tigress' Can Jam.  Be sure to check out the March Can Jam Roundup.

Happy Canning and Baking!
Cathy

 

Here are some of the references I use in my canning adventures. You might enjoy them as well:

• Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
• The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving
• Keeping The Harvest: Discover the Homegrown Goodness of Putting Up Your Own Fruits, Vegetables and Herbs
• National Center for Home Preservation