Pizza!

Finally! I can put the pizza dough and pizza sauce recipes that I've posted together into their final product - pizza!  There are a few necessary tools to making a good pizza at home.  You could use neither of them and bake the pizza on a round pizza baking sheet, but you will not get as good a crust.  If you like to make pizza at home, I would definitely suggest investing in these two items - a baking stone (or equivalent) and a pizza peel.

1.  Baking stones are expensive but they really make a difference when making a pizza.  However, there is a way around this!  You can usually purchase unglazed ceramic flooring tiles at stores like Lowe's or Home Depot.  They work just like baking stones and are much less expensive.  I'm talking about $2 per tile versus $40-60 per stone.  The tile will be more prone to break than a baking stone since they are thinner but you can buy a couple at a time (and I've been using mine for about 4 months and it's still going strong).  You may need to get the tile trimmed if it doesn't fit in your oven (I think we had to get ours trimmed about 3-4 inches on one side), but Lowe's or Home Depot will usually do it for you for free.

2.  Pizza peels are imperative for transferring your pizza onto the scalding hot baking stone in your oven.   Don't try to do it any other way.  I'm warning you - I've been there, done that.  Made a beautiful pizza and then couldn't get it off the counter and into the oven!  Absolutely could not do it.  I had to throw the whole thing away and go out for pizza.  It was a disaster.  This catastrophe was also helped by the fact that I did not flour my counter top enough.  But!  Get a pizza peel.  They are relatively cheap on Amazon (this is the one I have - $17).  You'll thank me.

Pizza Sauce

I've used Prego spaghetti sauce as pizza sauce for a long time and I had not given much thought to making my own sauce until I stumbled upon a very easy looking recipe for pizza sauce.  After giving it a shot, I think it's definitely worth it to make your own sauce.  It wasn't very difficult but it did take a little time because you need to cook out as much water as possible so it doesn't make your pizza soggy.  I think my tastes are changing because previously I didn't like anything spicy but lately I've been able to tolerate it more and even like it in some cases, like this pizza.  The recipe that I used was a little on the spicy side but it was still really, really good.  This recipe made a lot of sauce and I've put the leftovers into a cleaned out glass jar in the fridge.  I would think it would keep a week or two and if you make pizza as much as we like to around here, it works out great.  However, I'm sure it would also be good as a dipping sauce or tossed with some pasta.

Bird Days of Spring

Andrew and I worked outside around the house this weekend because it was just so darn nice (and by Andrew and I worked, I mean Andrew worked and I sat in the shade, kept him company, and sneezed).  He planted several flowers that we bought at the Horticulture plant sale and found places for a few hanging baskets.

Dusty Miller along the front and edges, Petunias right behind them, a row of bulbs planted that have yet to come up next, and Marigolds along the back with red Geraniums in the handing basket.  I think I'm in love with the Dusty Miller - it's really neat looking!

Pizza Dough

One of Andrew's favorite things is pizza, but I'm really not a huge fan of delivery pizza or frozen pizza so we decided to try our hand at making it.  We started off making pizza with store bought dough, Prego spaghetti sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, and whatever toppings we felt like - usually pepperoni or sausage and mushrooms.  And it was pretty good, much better than delivery in my opinion.  Then I started getting into baking bread and decided to give homemade crust a go.  There was no turning back.  It was leaps and bounds better than store bought.  Then I decided to try real mozzarella rather than pre-shredded* and I mean the stuff in a log in the specialty cheese section of the grocery store.  Ooooh man it was good.  And do not make the mistake of buying the generic, store brand whole mozzarella because it isn't really any better than preshredded (it's very grainy).  Get name brand cheese.  It's more expensive than generic or pre-shredded cheese of course, but the price is worth it.  Recently, I've also tried my hand at making pizza sauce which I'll discuss later.  As you can see, pizza making in our house has been through quite an evolution.  It's definitely one of those things that I always feel like I can improve on and I rarely make it the exact same way twice.

There are several recipes involved with making pizza so I think I'll do them one at a time instead of overwhelming one post with three different recipes.   But if anyone is particularly antsy to try their hand at making homemade pizza, email me :)  

Homemade Crescent Rolls

This week has been better on the cooking more, eating out less front - which is a good thing!  However, I haven't made anything terribly interesting.  I made some French bread that I wanted to use for this blog, but it didn't hold it's shape and while it tastes pretty darn good, it's flat and mopey and ugly.  So I'm going to hold off on that recipe until I bake a loaf that looks right!  Right now, I have a very tantalizing carton of strawberries sitting in my fridge that's destine for something sweet towards the end of the week or this weekend - possibly strawberry cake or strawberry cheesecake.

School is trucking along.  I turned in several papers in the past week that were weighing pretty heavily on me.  At this point, I have a 5-7 page paper for Election Law that I'm either going to do on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission or People v. Ohrenstein, which is due at the end of the semester.  I have a 5 page midterm for Organizational Theory that I'll get April 26th and will have a week to work on.  I have a research project for Election Administration that I have to finish up the last leg on and then combine nicely into a notebook to turn in.  And that's it for graduate school.  For school.  Forever (at least until I decide it's time to get my Ph.D. - which will be awhile!).  I'm excited to be so close to done, but there are still several puzzle pieces that need to fall into place for me to graduate and get to this internship.

These crescent rolls were surprisingly easy to make.  Seriously.  You make the dough, roll the dough out like a pizza, use a pizza cutter to cut it into 'slices', and then roll up the slices like you do crescent rolls from a can. As you can see, my crescent rolls are quite fat so I will try to roll them out thinner next time I make this.  While they look and taste very similar to store bought, the texture is very different.  Store bought are flaky while these are soft, like a dinner roll.  But still fantastic with butter and jelly.  These bad boys have a rising time of about an hour, which is pretty good for a yeast bread.  They could easily be made on a week night if you started early enough.

 

(taken with my iPhone)

School, Pollen, and SnoBiz

Not too much cooking going on this week for many reasons - school work has been attempting to swallow me whole, Andrew's been out of town and cooking for one is No. Fun., and myriad other little problems have been popping up out of no where.  The great pollen inundation of the spring has begun, coating everything in a fine (and sometimes not so fine) layer of yellow.  Washing your car or anything else is of no use as the pollen will start recollecting as soon as you're done.  Note the greenish/yellow tint to the outdoor table in the picture below.  All this has resulted in many people's allergies going haywire, including my own. 

However, I did treat myself to my personal "Official Start to Summer" a.k.a. SnoBiz (yes, I can say it's the start of summer if it's 89 degrees).  I have a seriously unhealthy obsession with this wonderful combination of finely shaved ice and sugary syrup.  I'm not a huge ice cream person, but I will pretty much always take this stuff.  And about 90% of the time I will order Tiger's Blood which, if you've never heard of it (shame on you!), is a combination of strawberry and coconut or piña colada.  I wish the shaved ice had stayed as vibrantly colored as when I purchased it, but I had to wait until I got home to take the picture.

Vegan Zucchini Bread

I enjoy cooking for my friends and, as I'm mentioned before, I have a very good friend who is vegan.  So from time to time, you will see a few vegan recipes pop up around here.  My feelings on being vegetarian or vegan are mixed.  I certainly understand doing it for health reasons (for example, another very good friend of mine who is vegan does so because of severe lactose intolerance and food allergies).  I also understand the desire to eat healthy and more natural but I feel that this can be done without such radical steps as to completely cut large food groups out of your diet.  Just about any diet or lifestyle change can work for you, as long as you watch your portions and make smart choices - but certainly to each his own.  Plus, I just really like food :)  Regardless of my personal opinion, vegetarians and vegans do lend an interesting challenge to cooking and baking!