I feel a little spoiled right now....my husband is upstairs, putting one kid to bed and the other in the tub while I sit and sip my chai and play on the computer, but hey, I'll take it! So as you may gather from the title, I kind of enjoyed dinner tonight (as I say this I'm contemplating seeing if its as good cold as it was straight out of the oven).
I realized this morning we were out of bread, so I loaded up the breadmaker for a big loaf. I noticed there was a small cup full of fresh thyme and winter savory on the counter left over from the night before so I threw that in too. I really like fresh herbs in my bread.
As my husband was leaving to go play football, he looked at the breadmaker and said "Can you make pizza dough too? I want pizza!" Sounded good to me. Since the bread machine was already occupied, I made the dough by hand. I made enough for two pizzas since he's a little pickier than the rest of us.
The Dough
2 cups white bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast(I use it for everything)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 - 2 cups water (play around, it depends on your flour and the humidity)
You can also make this dough in the bread machine, if its free.....
Put all the ingredients in a large bowl (I use a large wooden salad bowl because its nice and wide and gives me lots of room to knead). Mix it until it forms a nice ball, it should be stick but not messy. Add a bit of flour or water until you get it where you want it. Knead for 5-10 minutes until its smooth and elastic. Take the dough out of the bowl, and put a small amount of olive in the bowl(just enough to lightly coat the bread) Throw the dough back in, rolling it in the oil to coat. Put a piece of plastic wrap lightly over the dough, and then a towel. Find a warm spot for the dough to rise. I put mine on top of the water heater and run a load on hot in the washer. It seems to work pretty well and is a good incentive to do a load of laundry. If you don't have a nice warm place to let your dough rise, a heating pad works well. You can do it in the oven if you're really in a rish, but put it as low as it will go and maybe keep the door cracked. Anything abouve 140 can kill the yeast. Yeast will rise, even without the warm area, it just rises much quicker with it.
While the dough is rising you can prep all your toppings. It took me a long time because I had alot of produce in my fridge that I wanted to use up and I was feeling all gourmet-ish.
1 medium to large eggplant
2 red bell peppers
2 zucchini
1 yellow onion
half a tomato (it was left over from breakfast and already cut so i just decided to use it)
1 portabello mushroom
a few handfuls fresh baby spinach
goat cheese
feta cheese
marinara sauce (recipe below too)
MARINARA SAUCE RECIPE
I got this from Giada de Laurentiis on an episode of Rachael Ray. I love both of them because their recipes are so simple i can always just remember them after watching the show. Giada kept making fun of her husband because, being from Michigan, he'd never had a proper marinara sauce (or as she calls it "mah-ri-nah-rah"). I couldn't believe how easy it was to turn canned tomatoes into something that tasted so good with none of that "I was just dumped from the can" taste. This recipe makes more that you will need for the pizza, but believe me, you'll want extra! And if youre gonna make it, you might as well make a bunch....it freezes well too.
2 large cans of tomatoes, diced, crushed, stewed -whatever you've got on hand
1-2 large carrots just broken in half (or I used about 8 baby carrots...just what i had around.)
1 stalk of celery broken in half
1 large yellow or white onion peeled and whole
1 clove of garlic (I didn't have fresh so I used a scoop of the minced garlic that was close to the size of one clove)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
small pinch of sugar
Put all the ingredients but the salt and pepper in a large soup pot and just let it simmer. I let mine go all the way until my crusts were done cooking, right up until i spread it on. It was over an hour. When your marinara is done, scoop out the bay leaves, onion, carrot, celery and garlic (if you used a whole clove). You can toss them in the compost or use them in soup later. I kept the carrots and celery and just cut it into bits for my 10 month old. He loved it. Add a bit of salt and coarse ground black pepper to taste. Then add a small pinch of sugar, really small, you can always add more. Smush the tomatoes a little with a spoon or a potato masher. If you like smooth marinara you can blend it.
I peeled and sliced the eggplant, and sprinkled a bit of salt over it to draw out the bitterness. Then i fried it in a bit of olive oil till it was browned on each side. Don't crowd the pan, you want it to get a nice crust. When its done lay it on a plate with a paper towel, you want the oil to come off.
Do the same with the zucchini, except leave the peel on and your mushrooms. Thinly slice and carmelize your onion.
Cut your red bell peppers in half and take the seeds out. Lay them on a sheet of foil and put under the broiler (move the rack down to about the middle of the oven so they have a chance to get roasted and not just black).
If the peppers are looking black around the edges, but you want them to roast a bit more, turn the broiler off, and turn the oven to 425. Let them just get nice and sweet and mushy. When the peppers are done, slice them into strips after you've let them cool a bit.
Rip or chop the baby spinach into smaller pieces.
Here are your toppings, all laid out and ready for quick assembly. (I use the same pan over and over to cut down on washing, and just kept emptying it onto a plate.
After the dough has doubled in size, divide it in two and roll out both halves on a floured surface. Keep its as thick or thin as you like (but remember it will puff back up so i reccomend between 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick) lay each crust on a baking sheet and cover with a towel to rise a bit while you preheat the oven to 425. No need to find a warm spot, i just lay it on the counter, or the stove. After it has risen for about 10 minutes, use your fingers to poke in all over the dough like foccaccia bread.
Bake till it starts to get golden brown and crispy, keep an eye on it, all ovens are so different. I bake one crust at a time, they just seem to bake more evenly that way. While the second one is baking, I do all the toppings on the crust that's already done.
Spread the marinara on the crust, leaving just a bit of room at the egde. Then layer your toppings, and then cheese. Sprinkle with cracked black pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, then back in the oven for a few minutes util the spinach is wilted and the pizza is warm.
Like I said above, we made 2 pizzas. Here's how it broke down.
Pizza #1
Marinara
Eggplant
Zucchini
Portabello
Roasted Peppers
Carmelized Onions
Spinach
Goat Cheese
Pizza #2
Marinara
Zucchini
Fresh tomato
Roasted Pepper
Carmelized Onion
Spinach
Feta Cheese
I usually like my own food, but am also pretty critical of it. I bit into this fresh out of the oven, and literally said "Oh my God. This is the best pizza I have ever had!" The crust was, well....crusty! The toppings melted into it, and somehow the marinara had a smokiness that just made it feel so hearty. And yes, it is pretty good cold too! This is a great vegitarian meal, very filling and satisfying. We had it just with a spinach salad on the side. You could easily make it vegan by omitting the cheese, or doing vegan cheese crumbles. But cheese is one of my favorite things in the world, and I really thought the goat cheese MADE this pizza.
This was such a fun thing to make with my daughter too, she's 3 and a half, and LOVES to "help" in the kitchen. I let her knead the dough. She put all the toppings on the pizzas, and she kept peeking to make sure nothing was burning (through the oven window of course). And, as always, she was my official taste tester. Which would more truthfully be called my "eat half the food before its served" volunteer. But hey, I'm not gonna complain. She was eating raw zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes and handfuls of spinach. I didn't really care if she spoiled her dinner on that!
I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it was just alot of simple steps. It's a great way to enlist the help of family and share some time teaching about food and healthy eating. And except for the cheeses everything was made totally from scratch, which makes me feel really good. No high fructose corn syrup. No preservatives. And when you you put effort, thought, and love into your food.....boy does it show!
it looks so pretty and sounds so yummy!!!
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