It’s July. While the rest of the country is baking, I’m baking.
After investing last Sunday morning in baking pane Toscano, this week, I wanted something quicker, something between a 3-hour commitment and the half hour drive to Top Pot for a pershing. I’ve been thinking about non-pizza uses for pizza dough. So, first stop, cinnamon rolls. It’s a well-worn road by the looks of Google, so I went with Kristen’s recipe over at Batter Licker as a starting point. Read more
Just looking at this photo has me longing to be on vacation again. A few weeks ago, we squeezed in one last little summer getaway for us and the dogs and drove down to Cannon Beach. Here’s a quick look at a few of the highlights.
The thing to know is in the off-season, some restaurants/bakeries are closed a couple of days mid-week and don’t include hours on their Web sites. So call ahead if you’re planning a trip this fall/winter. Read more
Grilled pizza experiments this weekend, using Mark Bittman’s pizza dough recipe from How to Cook Everything. This one is just canned Romas (hand crushed), grated mozzarella cheese, prosciutto and arugula. The other one we did was nectarine, chopped Russian red kale, prosciutto and goat cheese. It tasted great, but did not photograph well, since the kale got a little, um, well done.
Learnings so far:
1. Par-grilling is key. Give the dough a minute or two on both sides before topping it. It seems obvious in retrospect, but made a huge difference in the final product. We had to throw the first one in the broiler to finish, defeating the purpose of not turning on the oven.
2. Have all your toppings ready. There‘s no time for, oops, forgot to grate the cheese.
3. Manage your heat. We cranked it up to 600F on our gas grill to start, but still haven’t quite gotten the perfect topping temp down, so far it’s between 300-400, but depends on the toppings.
4. Use a peel if you have one, or at the very least a large metal turner. In a panic, I flipped the first crust with tongs since the peel was on its way out with dough for the second pizza. Tongs = tearing.
Update 7/31, 2:50 pm: We put the tomatoes and mozzarella on while the crust was on the grill and gave it a couple of minutes to cook/melt. Added the prosciutto just before it came off and topped w/ arugula back in the kitchen.
I can’t say I’m surprised about the US result (although I thought #1 would be burgers). Pizza night – whether homemade or take-out – is almost a weekly occurrence for us. That being the case, you’d think I’d be a lot better at rolling the dough into a circle. But when it comes to pizza, I’m geometrically-challenged. Not unlike my experience in 10th grade geometry, I understand the technique, but there’s a disconnect between my brain and the rolling pin. It does make for interesting shapes — oblongs, rectangles, squares. I’d say this one is between bent snowboard and Christmas stocking. Read more
