Pizza | Chickens in the Road

Posts Tagged ‘pizza’

Jun
15

Breads, The Farmhouse Table

I love pizza! But first of all, there is no pizza delivery in the country. There’s takeout pizza at the little store in town, but with three hungry children (two of them being teenage boys), that can get pretty expensive. And seeing as how it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the little store in town, and another 20 minutes to get back, I might as well make it at home.

Homemade pizza is actually a great busy-day dinner. You can shortcut the sauce, either with some Basic Italian-Style Tomato Sauce you might have onhand, or with a jar of storebought sauce. Shortcut the cheese by keeping some pre-shredded mozzarella onhand, too. All it takes after that is slicing up your toppings. The pizza bread itself? That’s the last place you should cut corners because it’s the very foundation of your pizza. Great pizza bread makes great pizza. And you can make great pizza bread in one hour, from starting the dough to sliding the prepared pizza into the oven with this easy pizza dough–another variation on my Hot, Crusty French Bread recipe. (And it’s so easy, even my 12-year-old can make her own pizza!)

*The following recipe makes one pizza if using 16-inch pizza pans. Double, triple, quadruple recipe as needed. If I’m baking four pizzas, I use two bowls and do a double recipe in each bowl.

How to Make the Best Pizza Dough:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package yeast
(rapid-rise recommended)
1 cup warm water
salt to taste (I use 3/4 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a large bowl, combine water with yeast, salt, and olive oil. Let sit for five minutes before beginning to add the flour.

Stir in flour until the dough is stiff enough to knead. Add flour a little at a time. Three cups of flour is approximate; exact amount may vary slightly. Knead dough until smooth and elastic–-just a few minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl; cover. Let rise until doubled. (Using rapid-rise yeast, unless your house is very cold, the rise time should be approximately 30 minutes.)

After dough has risen, roll out directly onto a greased pizza pan, sprinkling flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.

I like to use a small plastic cup to roll out pizza dough instead of a rolling pin because the smaller size is easier to manage with the raised edges of a pizza pan.

Before adding any sauce and toppings, bake pizza bread at 400-degrees for about 8 minutes. Take out pizza bread. Add sauce and toppings as desired. Put completed pizza back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes. If I’m baking two at a time, halfway into the baking time I switch the pizzas on the oven racks.

For dessert pizza, use melted butter and a mix of sugar and cinnamon, or add fruit!

Another of my favorite ways to fix pizza is to skip the sauce entirely. I sprinkle olive oil on top of the prepared, pre-baked pizza bread (in place of sauce) then add my toppings. One of my favorite combos when making pizza this way is Swiss cheese, crumbled bacon, and onions and/or peppers. Yum! How about you? What’s your favorite pizza?

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn @ 5:05 am | Permalink
Tags: pizza, yeast breads

Feb
27

Main Dishes, The Farmhouse Table

Last year, after a trip to Myrtle Beach with a friend, we detoured by Wilmington, North Carolina, on the way back and I had the most wonderful dish at a restaurant right on the water. I can’t remember what they called it, but it was basically strips of french bread pizza with olive oil, shrimp, peppers, and cheese. It was soooo delicious. I’ve been making french bread pizza for a long time, but I’d never made it with quite that combination before and I just loved it. Since then, it’s really become one of my favorite comfort foods.
Now because I am such a bread-baking fanatic, I have to go on for a moment about the wonders of fresh-baked homemade french bread and how nothing can compare. I just wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say that and then you’d all be saying, “SUZANNE, what is wrong with you?” and you’d be disappointed. And of course it’s true and it’s so easy to make homemade bread and it’s soooo good.

But, I want to say that if you can’t, just can’t, bring yourself to make homemade french bread, you can buy some french bread and still make this recipe. And I won’t think anything bad about you, I promise.

How to make Shrimp French Bread Pizza:

I’m not going to give specific quantities here because it all depends on how many different ingredients you’re adding and how many loaves of french bread you’re using (not to mention the size of the loaves). On this occasion, I made three loaves of french bread. I have big kids who are big eaters! And they love french bread pizza. I started out by frying peppered bacon. When that was ready, I set it aside to drain while I sauteed some chopped onions, then drained that as well and sauteed some medium-sized shrimp. I cooked the shrimp a pretty good while to let it soak up the bacon and onion juices and develop a nice golden glaze.

Next, slice the french bread loaves in half horizontally. Drizzle olive oil and spread with a spoon or fork to get an even coverage. I like to sprinkle on some garlic powder at this point. Yum! Garlic gets me all excited….

Add shredded swiss cheese first, then layer on the onion, bacon, and shrimp. I wasn’t using any peppers this time, so I thought it needed some decorating. I threw on some dried chives for fun. Now bake in a 375-degree oven for about 15 minutes, slice into handy pieces, and you have a fabulously easy meal that looks and tastes like it came from a gourmet restaurant!

I like this in so many combinations. Mushroom, onion, and swiss. Bacon, onion, and swiss. Sausage. Ground beef. Peppers. (Notice I really love swiss cheese….but any cheese that is your favorite works, too.) For a different take, use a tomato-based sauce and make a more traditional french bread pizza with pepperoni slices and mozzarella. It’s all good! I could eat it every day, with Chocolate Lava Cakes for dessert! (Speaking of comfort food!! CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKES.)