Monday, September 04, 2006
Pizza! Pizza!
Let me start this post by saying that the weather here in Chicagoland has been very cool. So much so that I've been cooking up a storm. I have three more posts after this one. I hope to get them all out this week but that all depends on how busy I am. So I decided to kick off the cool weather cooking with pizza. How can you go wrong?
I've been making pizza for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid every Friday night was pizza night at our house. My mother would churn out pizzas left and right and I would help; eventually she taught me how to make them myself. She was a great a teacher, no doubt about that, but there was a flaw in her method. She never taught me to measure properly. Everything was, get the big green bowl, fill it with warm water up to here, add about that much salt, etc, etc. And don't get me wrong, it worked well, but that was enough dough for like 6 pizza's; kind of a bit much for just me and the wife.
So through trial and error I've come up a good recipe and I'm going to share that with you tonight.
To start with you'll need a big bowl. I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Now before you start crying that you don't have a stand mixer just remember that I used to do this all by hand. In fact; my mother still mixes her dough by hand; so shut yer pie hole and let's add the wet ingredients.
In your bowl add:
1 1/4 Cup warm water
1 package of rapid rise yeast
1/2 Tablespoon of kosher salt
2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
Toss it all in the bowl and stir it up until the salt, sugar, and yeast dissolves. It'll look like such.
So then, once the wet ingredients are mixed we'll slowly start to add the flour. I like to use flour made for bread machines; it holds up better in the mixer. In total we'll add about 3 1/2 Cups of flour a half Cup at a time until it becomes incorporated. It'll start to look like this:
When it gets to that point you'll have to knead it by hand or with the mixers dough hook for about 15 minutes. It'll eventually look like this:
Once it's been kneaded; rub the top with olive oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and toss it somewhere to rise. It should take about an hour and half to two hours to double in size. I don't buy into the whole "punch it down and let it rise again" I want to eat sometime tonight so that ain't gonna happen. While the dough is rising you should gather up your toppings. I'm all about convenience so I use a canned sauce (oh stop the gasping it's pretty good), pre-shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, sausage (fresh from the freezer after our first post), garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
I like to pre-cook both my mushrooms and sausage before I put them on the pizza. Why? Well I don't have a pizza oven at home, my oven only gets up to about 500 degrees, a pizza oven is much higher than that. I found that if I use fresh sausage on the pizza the crust is overcooked by the time the sausage is cooked. So to get around that problem I pan fry my sausage first. Once it's cooked I remove it from the pan, de-glaze with a splash of wine and then add my mushrooms. The mushrooms will pick up the flavor of the sausage as well as all them little brown bits of porky goodness.
Now that the dough has risen for a couple hours it's time to stretch it out into the pan; but first crank the oven up to 450 degrees. I use a rectangular sheet pan; I like them better than round pans for some reason. I use Crisco brand shortening to grease the pan. I've tried other things like butter or olive oil and flour, etc, but I find that the Crisco just works the best and produces an awesome golden brown crust; trust me. So stretch the pizza out into your pan; I use this little handy dandy rolling pin to get it where it need to go. I got it from the Pampered Chef. Once it's all in place I like to come back and press dimples into it with my finger tips. The little dimples make nice little pockets to hold sauce.
All right now for the assembly- first I spread garlic over the whole crust. Then I add the sauce, probably about 4 big tablespoons or so. Next I cover the whole pizza with the sausage. That's right- I use an entire pound of Italian sausage; it's just that f'en good. Cover the whole thing with the mozzarella cheese; I'd say about 1 1/2 to 2 Cups of cheese. Next I add the mushrooms, make sure you drain them first, you don't want them getting your pizza all soggy. Next, grind some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese across the whole pizza, you don't need much since this cheese has a ton of flavor. Finally- I add my secret spice blend to the entire pizza top. I can't tell you what is exactly since it's my super secret pizza spice, but let's say it has dried oregano, basil, parsley, and some other things I can't mention.
It then goes into your pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 12 or 13 minutes. Check the bottom of the crust, it should be a nice golden brown. If the pizza is done pull it out and remove it from the pan onto cooling racks. It'll need to sit there about 5 minutes or so to cool down a bit. Look at how good it looks.
Normally I make a much thicker crust but I was in a hurry this particular night and didn't let the dough rise as much as I should have; but hey even a mistake like this is delicious. Slice it up and enjoy!
I've been making pizza for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid every Friday night was pizza night at our house. My mother would churn out pizzas left and right and I would help; eventually she taught me how to make them myself. She was a great a teacher, no doubt about that, but there was a flaw in her method. She never taught me to measure properly. Everything was, get the big green bowl, fill it with warm water up to here, add about that much salt, etc, etc. And don't get me wrong, it worked well, but that was enough dough for like 6 pizza's; kind of a bit much for just me and the wife.
So through trial and error I've come up a good recipe and I'm going to share that with you tonight.
To start with you'll need a big bowl. I use my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Now before you start crying that you don't have a stand mixer just remember that I used to do this all by hand. In fact; my mother still mixes her dough by hand; so shut yer pie hole and let's add the wet ingredients.
In your bowl add:
1 1/4 Cup warm water
1 package of rapid rise yeast
1/2 Tablespoon of kosher salt
2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
Toss it all in the bowl and stir it up until the salt, sugar, and yeast dissolves. It'll look like such.
So then, once the wet ingredients are mixed we'll slowly start to add the flour. I like to use flour made for bread machines; it holds up better in the mixer. In total we'll add about 3 1/2 Cups of flour a half Cup at a time until it becomes incorporated. It'll start to look like this:
When it gets to that point you'll have to knead it by hand or with the mixers dough hook for about 15 minutes. It'll eventually look like this:
Once it's been kneaded; rub the top with olive oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and toss it somewhere to rise. It should take about an hour and half to two hours to double in size. I don't buy into the whole "punch it down and let it rise again" I want to eat sometime tonight so that ain't gonna happen. While the dough is rising you should gather up your toppings. I'm all about convenience so I use a canned sauce (oh stop the gasping it's pretty good), pre-shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, sausage (fresh from the freezer after our first post), garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
I like to pre-cook both my mushrooms and sausage before I put them on the pizza. Why? Well I don't have a pizza oven at home, my oven only gets up to about 500 degrees, a pizza oven is much higher than that. I found that if I use fresh sausage on the pizza the crust is overcooked by the time the sausage is cooked. So to get around that problem I pan fry my sausage first. Once it's cooked I remove it from the pan, de-glaze with a splash of wine and then add my mushrooms. The mushrooms will pick up the flavor of the sausage as well as all them little brown bits of porky goodness.
Now that the dough has risen for a couple hours it's time to stretch it out into the pan; but first crank the oven up to 450 degrees. I use a rectangular sheet pan; I like them better than round pans for some reason. I use Crisco brand shortening to grease the pan. I've tried other things like butter or olive oil and flour, etc, but I find that the Crisco just works the best and produces an awesome golden brown crust; trust me. So stretch the pizza out into your pan; I use this little handy dandy rolling pin to get it where it need to go. I got it from the Pampered Chef. Once it's all in place I like to come back and press dimples into it with my finger tips. The little dimples make nice little pockets to hold sauce.
All right now for the assembly- first I spread garlic over the whole crust. Then I add the sauce, probably about 4 big tablespoons or so. Next I cover the whole pizza with the sausage. That's right- I use an entire pound of Italian sausage; it's just that f'en good. Cover the whole thing with the mozzarella cheese; I'd say about 1 1/2 to 2 Cups of cheese. Next I add the mushrooms, make sure you drain them first, you don't want them getting your pizza all soggy. Next, grind some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese across the whole pizza, you don't need much since this cheese has a ton of flavor. Finally- I add my secret spice blend to the entire pizza top. I can't tell you what is exactly since it's my super secret pizza spice, but let's say it has dried oregano, basil, parsley, and some other things I can't mention.
It then goes into your pre-heated 450 degree oven for about 12 or 13 minutes. Check the bottom of the crust, it should be a nice golden brown. If the pizza is done pull it out and remove it from the pan onto cooling racks. It'll need to sit there about 5 minutes or so to cool down a bit. Look at how good it looks.
Normally I make a much thicker crust but I was in a hurry this particular night and didn't let the dough rise as much as I should have; but hey even a mistake like this is delicious. Slice it up and enjoy!
