Cooking pizza

THE BASIC EQUIPMENT

Pizza Stone.  Due to its ability to retain heat, it replicates the concept of placing pizzas directly into giant brick or clay ovens. 

Now…the instructions on your pizza stone may tell you to preheat your stone. I’m not going to tell you to ignore the manufacturer’s instructions (okay, so I am), and don’t shoot me if your pizza stone breaks after putting it into a hot oven, but in my experience and my completely non-scientific opinion, I don’t think that 425 degrees is hot enough to shatter your pizza stone as long as it isn’t cold to begin with and as long as it has something on it (like a crust). If you do preheat your stone, you’ll have a heck of a time getting your dough onto the stone in some semblance of a round shape before it starts to cook. 

French rolling pin. By no means do you HAVE to have a French rolling pin, but I much, much MUCH prefer my French rolling pin to my traditional rolling pin, especially when I’m working with large quantities of dough or when I’m shaping dough (like for a pizza). Because of the tapered ends, you can hold a tapered end in one hand and press the other tapered end against the dough in order to achieve whatever shape you’re after. Also, because it’s longer, it rolls the entire quantity of dough at one time rather than going back and forth over the dough, hoping that you’re achieving the same thickness.

THE BASIC INGREDIENTS

Dough. No matter what kind of pizza you make, you’ll need dough. I experimented with manydifferent dough recipes and my friend Lisa’s breadstick recipe ended up being my favorite!
I have to admit that I would love to learn to throw dough. But I also think that anyone who knows me personally would know that it would be a bad, bad, BAD idea for me to toss food products into the air. If any of you are more physically coordinated than I am OR if you already have mad dough-throwing skills (or if you just find food in the air fascinating), check out this video:

Sauce 

Pizza Sauce

1 6-oz. can tomato paste
6 oz. water (just use the empty tomato paste can)
3 Tbsp. garlic bread seasoning
1 Tbsp. sugar or honey (I usually use sugar because it’s easier and hey, I think we’ve established here that if there’s an easy road or a hard road, I usually take the easy road…)
3/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)

Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring constantly until combined. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use. Covers two average-sized pizza; freezes extremely well.

Guiltless Alfredo Sauce

2 C low-fat milk
1/3 C (3 oz) low fat cream cheese
2 T flour
1 t salt
1 T butter
3 garlic cloves
1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Toss the milk, cream cheese, flour, and salt in a blender.

Process until smooth and set aside.

In a non-stick sauce pan, melt butter on med-high heat and add garlic. Stand above the pan (but not close enough to scald your face) and inhale. Ahhh…butter and garlic. Okay, now get cooking again. Let the garlic saute for about 30 seconds, you don’t want to burn it. It should be nice and bubbly like this:

Then add milk mixture to the pan. Stir constantly for about 3 or 4 minutes or until it just comes to a simmer. Keep stirring and let it cook for a few minutes more. It should be much thicker now.


When it’s nice and thickened remove the pan from the heat. Add the cheese, stir it up and then cover immediately. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before using. It will continue to thicken upon standing. Also, if you have leftovers in the fridge, the sauce will thicken almost into a solid. Just re-heat and add a little milk and it will be back to normal again.

I use this sauce for so many things. Here’s a few ideas:

-Over pasta (obviously)
-As a dip for breadsticks
-As a sauce on pizza (this is the garlic cream sauce I was referring to in this recipe) and a half batch of sauce covers 2 medium pizza’s.
-Mix it with pesto for a creamy pesto sauce (so good)
-Mix it with marinara for a creamy marinara sauce

One time when we had dinner guests over with a bunch of kids, we did a pasta bar. I made a couple different pastas, a couple different meats, and then made this sauce, marinara, and pesto. Everyone had so much fun mixing and matching and combining. The adults could get fancy with alfredo-pesto over bow-ties and the kids could have plain ol’ spaghetti if they wanted to. Toss in some french bread and a salad and you have a really fun, and really easy meal!

This clocks in at around 100 calories for 1/4 C sauce!

Olive oil; it makes your crust crispy and delicious

Garlic salt; adds to crispy deliciousness.  Garlic Bread Seasoning works great too.Garlic Bread Seasoning

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1/2 c. powdered Parmesan cheese

2 tsp. Kosher salt

2 Tbsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. oregano

2 tsp. basil

2 tsp. marjoram

2 tsp. parsley

Combine ingredients in a jar (preferably one with a sprinkle top) and shake. Well, don’t shake until you’ve put the lid on, but I assume most of you are smart enough to figure that out! :)

Sprinkle on top of breadsticks or combine 1 1/2 Tbsp. seasoning with 1/2 c. of softened real butter and spread on a loaf of French bread (cut in 1/2 lengthwise). Wrap in foil and bake at 375 until butter’s melted. If you want, you could also pop it open-faced under the broiler for a few minutes so it gets brownish and crispy.

Cheese (about 8 ounces, shredded or in deli slices; for most pizzas, I just use Mozzarella)

Dried oregano; this is the “secret ingredient”–everyone will ask you what made your pizza so dang good and this is it! However…use it on your “traditional” pizzas; I don’t think it would be so tasty on abarbecue chicken pizza!

Desired toppings. Whatever you like on pizza! We’re going into greater detail on this later on in the week, but the possibilities of what you can put on pizza are endless! 

but our secret weapon pizza, especially in pizza pockets , is pepperoni, black olives, green peppers, red onions, and pineapple. Mmmmmm…

THE METHOD

1. Begin preparing your dough. Complete steps through the first rise.

2. While dough is rising, prepare your sauce.

3. Preheat your oven (and your pizza stone, if you want) to 425 degrees. While oven is heating, punch down dough and shape into a disc. Spray your work surface, rolling pin, and pizza stone with non-stick cooking spray. Place dough disc onto work surface. Roll and shape into a circle. (Disregard all of this, by the way, if you’re a stinking dough-thrower). Very gently transfer the dough onto your pizza stone and continue to shape up to the edges of the stone.

4. Using a fork, prick several holes in the crust. Drizzle crust with a little olive oil…and brush all the way up to the edges. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Both oiling and garlic salting the crust help crisp it up, give it a great flavor, and keep it from getting soggy in the middle.

5. Bake crust in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven.

6. Spread a layer of sauce (if desired) over the surface of the crust. Top with whatever toppings you like (I do the flat stuff, i.e. the meat, first).   Sara does a layer of cheese first to “glue” on the toppings and then tops with a bit extra after. 

Then sprinkle with oregano.

7. Return crust to oven and bake 10-12 more minutes or until cheese is melty and the crust is golden brown.

And there you have it. Beautiful pizza, completely non-doughy in the middle, a little crispy on the edges and chewy on the inside.

Grilled Pizza

Dough: 

You’ll need pizza dough. You could also buy dough. Many grocery stores and bakeries sell fresh, raw pizza dough. I’ve never grilled the kind in the tube, but even that would probably work if you’re in a pinch. I use this recipeand it makes 2 medium/large pizzas or 4-6 smaller personal pizzas.

I use it for everything–pocket sandwiches (like Hot Pockets, only not gross), breakfast pocket sandwiches, pizza crust, pizza pockets, whatever. 

Breadsticks

1 1/2 c. warm (105-115 degrees) water
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
3-4 1/2 c. flour

In a large bowl (the bowl of your mixer, if you have one), combine water, sugar, and yeast. Let stand for 10 minutes or until yeast is bubbly.

Add salt and stir. Add 1 1/2 c. flour and mix well. Gradually add more flour (usually between 3-4 cups, depending on your elevation and your humidity) until dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl and it barely sticks to your finger.

Spray a glass or metal bowl with cooking spray and place dough in the bowl.
Cover and allow to rise for 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Remove from bowl and place on a lightly-floured surface. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Roll into a rectangle and cut into 12 strips with a pizza cutter.

Roll out each piece of dough into a snake and then drape over your forefinger and twist the dough. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining 11 pieces of dough. Try to space them evenly, but it’s okay if they’re close; pulling apart hot bread is one of life’s greatest pleasures!

Cover pan and allow dough to rise for another 30 minutes. Look how fat and happy they are…

When there’s about 15 minutes to go, preheat your oven to 425. When done rising, bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Rub some butter on top of the breadsticks (just put a ziploc bag on your hand, grab some softened butter, and have at it) and sprinkle with garlic bread seasoning or the powdery Parmesan cheese in a can and garlic salt.

Or you could sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar.

Toppings:I suggest going a little lighter than normal on the toppings for a few reasons. 1. It will keep the pizzas easy to work with and easy to move around, etc. 2. The toppings will cook faster and be sure to be done if they’re not piled on heavy. 3. Probably the biggest reason- the grill adds so much flavor and texture that you don’t want (or need) to overpower it. Grilled pizza works great sauce-less, or try it with marinara, bbq, or garlic alfredo.

First you need to preheat your grill. The rack needs to be nice and hot so the dough will start cooking immediately and the overall temperature needs to be hot in order to act like an oven when the lid is closed. I set my gas grill to medium-high heat, and leave the lid shut.

Next, get all of your toppings ready. You have to move very quickly while on the grill so everything needs to be prepared and easy to grab. I usually set up a platter with everything I need and keep it next to the grill.

You’ll need:
1. Your toppings (cut, sliced, shredded, etc.) including sauce.
2. Some olive oil and a brush to brush it on.
3. A spoon to spread on sauce
4. A large spatula to flip the pizza

When your dough is ready, roll it out with a rolling pin, or even just use your hands to press and stretch it. Now listen.  You don’t need to make round pizza. I did for these pictures, but normally, I actually make them more rectangular because I have a giant rectangular shaped spatula to flip them with. The irregular shaped dough is part of the rustic beauty of grilled pizza. No rules! Don’t you feel daring??

Size: I find it easiest to make several small pizzas, especially if you’re trying this for the first time. If you want to go big, don’t go much larger than 2 pizzas per this recipe. That’s about a 9-10″ max. I like to do 4 small pizzas. You get a good 6-8″ pizza that will easily feed one very hungry adult or a couple of hungry kids. Another benefit of doing several smaller pizzas is that you can try out a bunch of different topping combos. Kids love having their own!

Once your dough is flattened out, drizzle a little olive oil on one side and brush it around

Now comes the fun part. Toss that puppy (oil side down) straight on the grill and then shut the lid immediately.

You’ll want the heat to stay inside so it acts like an oven and cooks the dough. The timing all depends on the heat of the grill and the thickness of the dough. But it usually only takes about 5 minutes or less. Have a spatula handy to lift up the dough and check it. You’ll want to see nice brown grill marks, but avoid burning it. If you can tell that your dough is cooking too fast and too hot, you may want to use indirect heat. For a gas grill with multiple burners, turn off the burner directly under the pizza, but leave the others on. For a charcoal grill, move the charcoal to one side of the grill and place the pizza on the other side.

Look at this picture:


Can you see the difference? If you look closely (you can click on it to enlarge) you’ll see that the top pic is all doughy on top and the bottom one is puffed and you can tell it’s dry to the touch. That’s a good sign it’s ready to flip. Check the bottom for nice grill marks. Right before you flip it, brush a little olive oil on the uncooked side.

As soon as you flip it grab that tray with your toppings and put them on the cooked side right away. Shut the lid again and leave it shut. The second side cooks pretty fast. If the bottom of your pizza is done, but the top still needs to cook, you can place it on an upper rack if you have one.

Take a peek at the bottom crust and as soon as it’s done and your cheese is all melty, grab a spatula and pull it off. I like to make a bunch of small pizzas and throw them all on cutting boards in the middle of the table and just let everyone cut into them.

You can make the dough as thick or as thin as you want. I did a couple of thinner crust ones in the picture below, and a thicker crust in the one above.