Pizza, or My Final Descent Into Ice-Induced Madness

OK, so it's been awhile since I've been outside. I didn't cook anything special on Wednesday, but that just caused me to start to idly consider what I would make if I could actually get to the store. I also spent too much time browsing cooking Web sites, always a dangerous pastime. I finally realized that although I had depleted a great deal of my stock of foodstuffs, I did have everything I needed to make pizza.

I made pizza several times while I lived in New Jersey but never made my own dough. Most pizzerias and Italian bakeries will sell you a pizza dough from their stacks of round, blonde domes that they make every day. Today, I made my own dough. The recipe is the essence of bread baking: flour, warm water, yeast, a little salt. After breakfast, I mixed the dough (thank goodness for Kitchen Aid mixers) and let it go through the two rounds of rising. I may have rushed it just a tad, but I was able to have a late lunch.

This photo doesn't do justice to the dough stretching process---I only have two hands so I couldn't stretch and take a picture at the same time. The basic technique, which I learned by watching the pros at work, is to continually work around the edge of the dough. Lightly pinch the edge of the dough and stretch it just a little bit, then move your hands to the next position and repeat. Holding it above the table seems dangerous at first but gravity helps stretch the dough---just make sure you keep it moving to avoid tearing. The dough should be very thin, almost worrisomely so. Just remember that it will rise while in the oven.

As you can see, my technique isn't perfect yet, but I did get it pretty thin. I covered the pizzas with my homemade tomato sauce and some high-quality shredded Parmesan. Another tip I learned from ordering too many pizzas was that cornmeal makes helps to move the pizza on the pan---the grains of cornmeal act as little tiny ball bearings. I cooked the pizza at 500 degrees, as hot as my oven would go. It took no more than five minutes to cook them through.

Here is the result. The edge was pale because my oven wasn't the 800 degrees that many pizza restaurants use. But overall this was my best effort at homemade pizza so far. The crust was properly thin. The hot oven gave it the right crusty on the bottom, chewy on the inside texture that is the mark of real pizza. I probably used a little too much sauce, but the only downside was a little mess as it dribbled. A hot, fresh pizza is a treat on any day but it was especially welcome today.

As the pizzas cooked, I noticed that the ice was finally melting. Not a moment too soon...

Asheville NC: Luella's BBQ

Luella's is a nouvelle BBQ outfit on the north side of Asheville. It is nestled among the trees in a lovely neighborhood. The restaurant has lots of windows for inside seating and plenty of outside seating. Service was courteous and amazingly fast. This is a combination plate with pork and brisket. Both were very moist and tender. For the pork, I tried both the mild and hot vinegar sauces. To my surprise, I preferred the milder one because it didn't assert itself too much. I enjoyed the spicy tomato sauce for my brisket. The hushpuppies were very good. The fried okra was fresh out of the fryer and excellent. The slaw was of the vinegary variety, which I usually enjoy, but this version is heavy on the white stuff and didn't have quite enough variety in tastes for me.

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...

Everybody's Pizza

Everybody's Pizza is across the street from Emory University. It was founded in 1971 and has a seventies college feel. But it isn't musty or dated---you don't feel like you are eating in a museum. It's just pleasantly funky. They played a Big Bird song while I was there. What's no to like? The pizza is college-style as well, as contrasted to the Italian neighborhood style that is (or should be) the goal of a New York style pizzeria. I think that the cheese is the ingredient that most leads me to this feeling. In a New York pizza, the cheese would be central (even if it came from a low-grade Mob supplier), while in more suburban pizzas, the cheese is seen as one in a medley of ingredients that form the topping. (I think that cheese-centrism should be the essence of pizza. Remember that the modern pizza was created by adding cheese to traditional tomato sauce-covered bread.) I think the biggest fault of this pizza is the crust, which I found to be just a lit...

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

Search This Blog