Day To Day Thoughts On Food

Home-made pizzas are so much fun…and the girls love to make them…their favorite is bacon and pineapple, and of course we used my home-cured bacon!  Pizza dough recipe and toppings below…

The dough is the easiest to make…I prefer to make it 1-2 days ahead, if possible, but a few hours is okay.  I use a bread maker to knead the dough and go through 1 rise, and then knead the dough once more (with a bit of flour) and split the dough into six dough balls, smother in a light oil, and cover with plastic wrap or wet towel and leave in the refrigerator until needed.  This time I made a 50:50 whole wheat dough with a bit of corn meal for bite.

pizza dough

250 g (2 cups) white bread flour

250 g (2 cups) stone ground whole wheat flour

100 g (1/2 cup) corn meal

1 sachet (or 1 Tb) active dry yeast

1 Tb honey or raw sugar

1 Tb oil

2 tsp salt

200 ml (7 fl oz) whole milk

200 ml (7 fl oz) water (add more water or flour depending on dough consistency)

pizza sauce

1 small can diced tomatoes in juice (no salt)

1 clove garlic, roughly chopped

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

6-8 leaves fresh basil

1 Tb fresh oregano

salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic and onions in a bit of oil for a few minutes, and then place with the rest of ingredients in a food processor or blender and puree until smooth.  It’s that simple!

toppings and styles

We made a range of pizzas this night.  The girls prefer bacon and pineapple.  The bacon I had at the moment was a brown sugar cure with nutmeg and black pepper…rich and sweet.  For the pineapple I minced up fresh pineapple and squeezed out the extra liquid before adding to the pizza (or use canned pineapple in juice and do the same).  We also had a pizza with csabai salami, caramelised onion, red bell pepper and asparagus.  On the sweet (and salty) side, we had a pizza with pear, pecan, blue cheese and creme freche.  Last we had a pizza with mushroom, onion, red bell pepper and boconcini mozzarella.