Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pizza. Show all posts
Chicken, Pesto & Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza
This recipe ought to look familiar. Its essentially the same as the Margherita Pizza, with the obvious changes with the toppings and the use of bread flour instead of all purpose flour. The flour change wasn't special to this pizza, I just happened to be out of flour and decided I'd give the bread flour a shot since its higher gluten content is supposed to create a chewier crust.
Chicken, Pesto, Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza:
- 1/4 cup pesto + 1 clove minced garlic (or to taste)
- 1-2 cups mozzarella cheese
- 1 lb diced, cooked chicken
- 1 pkg sun-dried tomatoes
- Shredded parmesan (optional)
- Feta cheese crumbles(optional)
You'll want to get the toppings ready before the dough, or at the very least while you're making the dough. So before you do anything else, do this:
- Preheat the oven with your pizza stone/baking sheet inside to 500 degrees.
- Cook your chicken. I typically dice it raw, marinate it in Italian dressing for 5 mins then saute it until cooked through (5 mins). If not that I'll use 1/4 - 1/2 cup chicken broth and poach the diced chicken and season it will salt & pepper. Either way make sure to strain or pat your chicken dry with paper towel before putting it on your pizza.
Thin Crust Pizza Dough:
- .25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
- 1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup warm (105-115 degrees) water, temperature measured with a thermometer
- 1 3/4 cups bread flour (AP works too, but bread flour tastes better)
- 1/2 tsp. salt
At this point you can either let the dough rise for 1-2 hours for a normal pizza crust or you can use it immediately for a thin crust pizza.
Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 2 minutes. Stretch or roll your dough into a 12" or 14" circle on a flour, parchment or corn meal covered surface. Brush the top surface of the dough with olive oil.
Remove your preheated pizza stone or baking sheet from the oven.Transfer your dough to the baking sheet/pizza stone, and quickly spread your pesto. Add your 1-2 cups of mozzarella cheese and top with the chicken and sun-dried tomatoes.- Sprinkle feta and/or parmesan cheese (optional).
- Bake at 500 for 8-10 minutes. Let cool 2-5 minutes. Enjoy.
While we were eating Lauren said "I could eat pizza 3-4 times a week if we made it like this and mixed up the toppings". Do you know how long I've been waiting to hear something like that? Right now we might eat pizza once a week and thats typically because we've got something going on after work and don't get a chance to think about dinner until after 8pm, at which point neither one of us wants to cook for 30 minutes or an hour.
Margherita Pizza
Okay, its been a long, long time since I've posted anything here. I am back in school full time this semester and working when I don't have class, so that doesn't really leave me much time to throw caution to the wind and tackle new recipes consistently enough to entertain the people that may or may not read this blog.
However last night Lauren and I had a chance to try our have at wood fired/brick oven style pizza. There are very few ways that homemade pizza can be cheaper than delivery pizza and practically none that are cheaper than frozen pizza. Except this one. Just a couple weeks ago Lauren and I got this same pizza at downtown restaurant and it cost us $12.95.
Margherita Pizza:
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 lb. Roma tomatoes, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/8 tsp. pepper (or to taste)
- 6 oz. (1.5 cups) mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 6 fresh basil leaves
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup fresh shredded parmesan cheese
You'll want to get the toppings ready before the dough, or at the very least while you're making the dough. So before you do anything else, do this:
- Preheat the oven with your pizza stone/baking sheet inside to 500 degrees.
- Combine 2 tablespoons olive oil, chopped tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl.
Thin Crust Pizza Dough:
- .25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
- 1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup warm (105-115 degrees) water, temperature measured with a thermometer
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water; let the yeast sit for 5-10 minutes or until frothy.
Combine flour and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer (with the dough hook attachment).
Pour yeast mixture into the flour mixture and turn the mixer on medium speed until your dough ball forms (2-3 minutes).
At this point you can either let the dough rise for 1-2 hours for a normal pizza crust or you can use it immediately for a thin crust pizza.
Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 2 minutes. Stretch or roll your dough into a 12" or 14" circle on a flour, parchment or corn meal covered surface. Brush the top surface of the dough with olive oil.
- Remove your preheated pizza stone or baking sheet from the oven .
- Transfer your dough to the baking sheet/pizza stone, and quickly add your 1.5 cups of mozzarella cheese and top with the chopped tomatoes.
- Drizzle lightly with olive oil and stick the baking sheet/pizza stone back in the oven for 8-10 minutes.
- Top with basil and parmesan (if you want), let the pizza cool for 2-5 minutes and enjoy.
You could also use fresh mozzarella instead of the shredded kind, but the grocery store was out when we stopped by, and I get the feeling it would probably cost $8 in cheese alone to cover the pizza that way.
For this pizza we only had to buy 4 Roma tomatoes (0.75 lbs at $1.59/lb so about $1.30) and shredded mozzarella ($2/8oz). Sure at some point we also had to buy the flour, olive oil, yeast, garlic and sugar, but those are all staple ingredients that are in the kitchen cabinets regardless of what we're making.
You can also improve the quality of your pizza by using bread flour instead of all purpose flour, fresh mozzarella instead of shredded and fresh basil instead of dried. Those are things we'll try at some point with this recipe. Of course with pizza the toppings are mostly irrelevant, its figuring out how to make a decent dough and cook it properly that makes or breaks the home made pizza experience. Now that we've established those two things its time to begin the experiments.
So I just can't imagine myself paying $12-$18 for a "gourmet" pizza any time in the near future.
By the way, that is not my pizza in the picture. That one clearly used fresh mozzarella. It was cut and I was eating it before I even thought about taking a picture. It was delicious. If I had my way I'd make it again tonight and then again next weekend while I watched football.
Pizza Bread? Stromboli?
I don't know what you call this exactly. My intent was to make pizza bread like my mom makes it, but it really didn't turn out that way. I think it could have, but I made one giant loaf rather than two smaller ones. What she always did when I was younger was make them two at a time, cook one and freeze the other. Hers always fit nicely into a loaf pan, a much more manageable size for freezer storage. Mine did not.
I got the dough recipe from Robert Irvine's Dinner Impossible on the Food Network. However mom's pizza bread was always made with wheat bread, something that I guess helped differentiate it from stromboli or a massive pizza roll. So what I did was use half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat flour.
Pizza Bread Dough
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 (1/4-ounce) packet fresh fast-acting yeast
- 1 1/2 cups warm water, between 100 and 115 degrees F, as measured with a thermometer (any hotter will kill the yeast - an organic leavener; too cool and the yeast won't be activated)
- 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus some extra to knead the dough (I used 2 cups wheat flour and 2 cups all-purpose)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Dissolve salt, sugar, and yeast in the warm water and allow the yeast to proof. ("Proofing" the yeast is testing it for viability. It will develop foam which looks like the head of a beer. If it doesn't proof, the yeast is dead and should be discarded.) Proofing takes about 15 minutes.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients in your stand mixer (or by hand) with the dough hook on medium speed for 4-5 minutes or until all the flour is gone and the dough is slapping around
your otherwise cleaning mixing bowl. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and form a ball. Rub the dough ball with a tablespoon of olive oil, put it back in your mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
Allow the dough to rise for 45-60 minutes, so that it roughly doubles in volume (the dough has risen enough if you make an indentation with your finger and it does not spring back.). Then punch the dough down and allow it to rise again. (Allowing the dough to rise a second time gives it a finer texture.) Note: It will not rise as much the second time.
When your dough is ready, turn it out on floured surface and roll it out with a rolling pin into two 14-inch circles (or one massive square like I did).
Filling
- 8-10 oz tomato sauce (I used Prego Organic Tomato & Basil because of its smooth, thicker texture)
- 2 cups (1 pkg) Mozzarella cheese
- 1 red bell pepper (diced)
- 1 yellow bell pepper (diced)
- 1 pkg (40?) sliced pepperoni
- 1 tbsp + 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 beaten egg
Saute your diced peppers in for about 5 minutes in 1tbsp olive oil. Do the same in a separate pan with your pepperoni until they are slightly crunchy. You don't have to do either of these steps, but the peppers get a little sweeter and the pepperoni just seems better when its crisp around the edges. I considered adding pineapple, but eventually decided against it because of concerns about the added moisture of the pineapple juice.
Spread your sauce and cheese around your dough, leaving a dry 1 inch perimeter around the edges. Add your toppings and then roll the whole thing up like a jelly roll. Seal the edges and put the seam side down on a baking sheet (or a loaf pan if it will fit). Brush the exterior with the beaten egg.
Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes. Remove and let it rest for 5 minutes so the bread softens.
One thing I found out after the fact was that this super loaf didn't quite cook all the way through the center of the middlemost piece. The centermost curl of dough in that piece was still a little
doughy. So I'd advise you to make this as two smaller loaves regardless of the situation. I don't know if you can tell by the pictures, but this thing is deceptively large. It doesn't seem that way when its all spread out like a pizza. But once you start rolling it up it seems to grow exponentially.
It tasted fantastic. Fresh bread is always much better than I remember. The pizza bread/stromboli makes for great leftovers and you can put pretty much whatever you want inside it. Just make sure the ingredients are cooked to your liking before they go in. Its also a really cheap way to make dinner. In the future I'll make an actual pizza using that same dough. I always though pizza dough was more complicated than that, but I guess all it takes is the right amount of patience.
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