Last night I made pizza. That is always an easy, yummy thing to make. It is a good idea to keep around the ingredients for sauce, crust & some mozerella in the freezer for just such an occasion.
Of course, yesterday I didn't have the ingredients for sauce. I thought I did. Here is my typical sauce:
A can of crushed tomatoes (fire roasted is especially good)
A can of tomato paste
Garlic, salt & pepper to taste
Splash of olive oil
Whatever Italian spices are around, ie. basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc.
Yummy every time and you don't even have to cook it.
I also have several open bottles of red wine around that I deemed undrinkable, so I was going to add some of that in too and maybe let it simmer for a while... that would have been good.
But I didn't have a can of tomato paste.
So Willy made the sauce!
He made a roux out of equal parts butter & flour over medium heat.
Then he added cream and milk until the consistency was right.
Next came a couple cloves of garlic, some freshly chopped basil, a couple tablespoons of grated parmesean cheese and salt.
I made the crust in the bread machine.
I thought that the reason you follow a recipe is so that it comes out the same every time. But for some reason it doesn't for me. Why I hate recipes.
The recipe that came in our bread machine is this:
1 cup + 2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cups bread flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 & 1/2 tsp yeast
I also added in 2 tsp of Italian seasoning, about 1/2 tsp of garlic powder, and probably close to 1/2 cup of shredded parmesean cheese.
Sometimes this comes out perfect. The trouble was that the dough was too wet today.
I know that scientific type people will tell me that I must have added too much water or left out some flour or something. I say, HA! I followed the recipe and it was too wet, even though it hasn't always been so.
Which of course I didn't discover until we were both starving and cooking dinner. So I kneaded in some flour before I rolled it out. So much for bread machines saving you all the work!
I always put flour down on my pizza stone before rolling out the dough. I find it helps keep the dough from sticking MUCH more reliably than oiling my stone. When I cook bread on there or whatever I do that too. There's my hint for the day.
We put the white sauce on there, then ham, then artichoke hearts (which Willy had painstakingly chopped and separated from any tougher leaves- more than I would have done), sliced mushrooms, mozerella of course, and some dried red pepper flakes.
It baked for 25 minutes on the convection setting with the oven at 400 degrees. (High altitude)
It was wonderful. And hit the spot at the end of the day. I wanted more than 2 slices, but I was glad I didn't have more- I would have been terribly stuffed.
Today while eating the leftovers, I do miss any kind of tomato on there. It just seems to me like pizza should have tomato on it. Next time.
