Tuesday, 10/12/2010

This morning I took Katie to Alki Beach to play in the sand.  What a beautiful morning for that outing!  She had lots of fun digging in the sand and looking at the boats and birds.  I only had to remove sand from her mouth once;)  Here are a few of my favorite photos from the morning.

And for dinner tonight, I decided to make pizzas, including dough from scratch.  Katie has been "helping" me rearrange the lower shelf of our pantry cupboard lately.  While putting everything back away, I was reminded that I had a jar of pizza sauce from Trader Joe's.  With pepperoni and Italian sausage left over from stoup last week, all I had to purchase at the store was mozzarella cheese.  I found a Bobby Flay recipe for pizza dough on www.foodnetwork.com.  It turned out ok.  It was probably the best pizza dough I have made myself, but was still a far cry from the greatness of Trader Joe's dough.  Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

2/3 cup lukewarm water (105 degrees F to 115 degrees F)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus additional for oiling bowl
1 3/4 to 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1/4 cup finely ground yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons coarse salt

Directions:
In a large bowl stir together 1/3 cup water, yeast, and sugar and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in remaining 1/3 cup water, 2 tablespoons oil, 1 3/4 cups flour, cornmeal, and salt and blend until the mixture forms a dough. Knead dough on a floured surface, incorporating as much of remaining 1/4 cup flour, as necessary, to prevent dough from sticking, until smooth about 5 to 10 minutes. Form the dough into a ball.

Lightly oil the sides and bottom of a large bowl with oil, add the dough, turn to coat in the oil, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Gently punch the dough down and divide into 4 equal pieces. Roll each piece on a lightly floured surface into a 10-inch circle that is 1/8-inch thick. Brush off excess flour and transfer the dough to a baking sheet, cover each circle of dough with plastic wrap and continue stacking rolled out pieces on top of each other. Wrap well with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to grill.

Notes:

1.  I used blue cornmeal instead of yellow.  I don't think it made a difference other than giving the dough a different color.  

2.  My dough did not double in size.  It made four, 6-inch pizzas, instead of 10-inch pizzas the recipe said to expect.  Ben and I each ate one and a half for dinner and saved one for tomorrow. Katie had some cheese and ketchup with chicken nuggets dipped in it for her dinner.  I'm pretty sure she ate more ketchup than chicken tonight.

3.  When I picked it, I didn't realize that this recipe was to be used for grilled pizzas.  Instead of grilling, we baked our pizzas on a pre-heated pizza stone for 10 minutes in a 450 degree oven.  It was a good guess:)
4.  I don't think this was "the" pizza dough recipe for me.  I'll keep trying to find one that works for me.