January 19, 2021

Pizza!

Pizza is a Friday night tradition at our house. It's always something to look forward to and I find that because we're home every day, specific meals on specific days helps mark the days of the week. From time to time, I have someone ask me about my recipe for pizza, so here it is. 

Dough

My pizza dough recipe is basically the same one I use for bread! The only difference is the oil and the flour. For bread, I use butter and half whole wheat flour. For pizza, I use all unbleached white flour, and the oil I use is my secret ingredient! 
  • 1.5 tsp baking yeast
  • 1 cup warm liquid of choice (I use water or whey)
  • 1 tbsp sweetening (I use unbleached sugar or honey)
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1.5 tsp. salt
  • 2 - 3 tablespoons *oil or melted fat

Mix yeast in warm liquid and sprinkle with sweetening. Let proof (work until the yeast begins to bubble and rise).

Yeast proofing

*Here's the secret ingredient. It's the herbed olive oil that I store my feta cheese in. (Directions here). The oil takes on a wonderful herby, cheesy flavor that makes delicious pizza crust!

The extra virgin olive oil I store my feta cheese in.

Mix yeast with remaining ingredients and knead well. Allow to rise at least once until double in bulk. Meanwhile. . . 

Toppings

The pizza I'm showing you here is Dan's favorite; pepperoni and black olive. 

Homemade goat mozzarella.

The sauce is made from my garden tomatoes,
but the other ingredients are obviously not!

Baking

Preheating the pizza stone to 425°F (220°C)

Sprinkling the hot stone with homegrown home-ground corn meal

The rolled out dough goes onto the hot stone, then the sauce.

Shredded mozzarella next.

Then toppings.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Enjoy hot!

I do try to mix up the toppings every week. My favorite is sausage and mushroom. 

This one is sausage, black olive, and mushroom. The
mushroom was a foraged puffball from the yard.

Show of hands; who else does Friday night pizza? Any special tips you'd like to share? Recipes? What are your favorite toppings? I'm interested!

22 comments:

wyomingheart said...

Leigh, that is one great looking pizza for sure! We haven’t made home pizza in years, because we have such a great pizza place near by. Our favorite is a white pizza with pineapple, ham, banana peppers and onions. Let me tell you, it just doesn’t get much better than that! When we first arrived on the ridge, I tried to replicate the recipe, but have since scrubbed the idea...never tastes the same! I look forward to breakfast, and that is how I keep track of the days of the week. It’s a fun thing for me to do. Very awesome to see how many ingredients come from the work you do on the homestead... that is truly rewarding, for sure!

daisy g said...

Looks delicious! I can no longer eat tomatoes, so my pizzas from now on will be pesto-based. My favorite toppings are black olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and vegan cheese. I may have to make some this week!

WILLIE...! =(^..^)= said...

Hello! Just passing...
I'm a Sicilian..Why? Because l was born in Sicily..! :).
I'm also a cook..a social cook..l cook for pleasure..!

So..Pizzas..Well..
A Sicilian pizza is usually at least one inch thick with
bready dough that is very porous as opposed to thin and
crispy...
It features a lot more tomato sauce than a normal pizza
and can often overtake the cheese...
Often times the sauce goes on top of the cheese to prevent
it from soaking into the dough...

Recipes for Sicilian pizzas are found on line, the Sicilian
pizza being usually rectangular in shape!

But! I will leave this, if anyone is interested to watch...
It's an American program..about pizzas, the host is American
though born in Sicily..the program is mostly based in America,
but recently he has gone further a field..! Enjoy...!
Thankyou for letting me stop by...Grazie..! :o).
🍁 🍂 🍃 🍁 🍂 🍃 🍁 🍂 🍃 🍁 🍂 🍃 🍁 🍂 🍃 🍁 🍂

WILLIE...! =(^..^)= said...

Oh! Dear! Sorry! I meant to leave this link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHjX6p-RbQ

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Leigh, for many years we did pizza on Sunday nights (not quite as much now as the girls are older). We used our bread maker for the dough, but largely followed your procedure otherwise: olive oil on the crust for the initial bake, followed by toppings. We used to do more pepperoni, but seemed to migrate to vegetables (peppers, olives, tomatoes, onions, etc.) along with tomato sauce and cheese (of course!).

I love pizza. It is a food that is simply delicious for every meal, hot or cold.

Leigh said...

Wyomingheart, now you've got me curious about your breakfast menus! I make pancakes on Sunday morning, but other than that our breakfasts are pretty much the same every day. Too bad you can't replicate your favorite pizza. On the other hand, ready-made is nice too!

Daisy, pesto based pizza sounds really good. As does Wyomingheart's white sauce pizza (I love alfredo sauce on pizza, but Dan tastes are more classic, so we stick with tomato based sauces.)

Willie, hello and welcome! My husband had a set of great-grandparents who were from Sicily. :) Great video! (I make gelato too, although mine is probably just as Americanized as my pizza, lol)

TB, do you make the mozzarella for your pizzas? Nothing beats homemade mozz. Love those veggie toppings too.

Ed said...

We do pizza once a week around here too though not always on the same day. It is just a filler meal when we don't have something planned but the refrigerator is bare because we always have ingredients for some sort of pizza around.

We have bounced around a lot on method of cooking though. Currently we have been using cast iron pans for several years because we like loaded pizzas and it is just easier to deal with lots of toppings with a cast iron pan with deep sides and a handle. I just preheat our cast iron pan in the oven to 450 degrees F. Once it is hot throughout, I pull it out, drizzle a fair amount of olive oil in the bottom and place the crust that I made and rolled around ahead of time. It starts precooking while I add the rest of the ingredients and then put it back in the oven. In 10 or 15 minutes later, the top is browned and due to the pre-cooking of the crust, it is nicely crispy for a thicker crust which we like.

Nina said...

I make pizza once in a while, on a day when we need a "fun" meal. I think the only real changes I make from my bread dough is quantity - a smaller batch, and I often use the quick rise yeast, which can be mixed right in to the flour, rather than proofed first. No special pans, or pizza stones. I use a round tin pizza pan and a rectangular cookie tray since that is what will fit in my oven. I need to make two so that the guys have leftovers. One is usually pepperoni, mushrooms and olives. The other is mushrooms, onions and pineapple. If I'm making it, I make one with the weird topping combo that I like :) Toppings do change though, depending on what's on hand at the time. It never goes to waste. Any pizza that wasn't hoovered down at supper, becomes breakfast or lunch for my guys.

Cockeyed Jo said...

Making Mozzarella now for pizza tonight. Ground beef, deer sausage, uncured pepperoni, black olives, onions, and lots of mushrooms. Yummy!

Leigh said...

Ed, I like the cast iron skillet idea. I'm going to have to try that!

Nina, pizza certainly is a fun meal. If you're the pizza chef, you can make whatever you like!

Jo, lovely about the deer sausage. Good combination!

Renee Nefe said...

Our weekly menu item is usually Taco Tuesday...although I am known to mix it up a bit and have other mexican menu items on Tuesdays instead and sometimes the tacos get made on Monday and we have left-over tacos for Tuesday. lol. We haven't had homemade pizza in a while because it has been cold and I want something like stew or soup.

Nancy In Boise said...

Looks great! No link for directions for the feta stored in oil?

Leigh said...

Renee, I haven't had tacos in forever! They sound good. Usually, I end up making fajitas with soft flour tortillas instead. "Taco Tuesday" is a great idea. Could be "Mexican Monday." :)

Nancy, I forgot! Thanks for pointing that out! I added the link. :)

Caroline M said...

We have taco Tuesday and pudding Saturday. It helps put some structure on the week where every day is the same. I made some canned taco beef from the Ball book which cooks through in about the time it takes to make the tortillas.

Leigh said...

Caroline, another one for Taco Tuesday! What a great idea to can the taco beef. I love convenience foods like that. Your Pudding Saturday really interests me! What kind of pudding? Pudding for dinner? Pudding for dessert?

Retired Knitter said...

Well I don’t enjoy cooking but I do enjoy eating! Ha! We have a wonderful pizza place near us. It does comparable pizzas to home cooked. My sister makes home cooked on an outdoor pizza grilly thing so I have reason for the comparison. BUT yours looks just wonderful. Its been a while since we had pizza and now I have a hankering for it.

Leigh said...

RT, I sometimes wish we had a place that made pizza like that. It would be a treat to take a break from cooking sometimes. But every time we order out, Dan comments that it's not as good as mine. :)

Chris said...

I need to get me a pizza stone. It's been on my radar for a while. With winter approaching for us soon, I'm going to put pizza on the menu again. At the moment we're enjoying pineapple and kale smoothies!

Your pizza looks delissimo!

Leigh said...

Chris, I love the pizza stone. Highly recommended. And I like the idea of your pineapple and kale smoothies, but I can't imagine the reaction I'd get from Dan if I announced we'd be having those for dinner on pizza night instead of pizza! LOL

bornfreev said...

Leigh, how long does your feta keep in the olive oil? I store mine in brine but I love the idea of the herb flavored oil with feta.

Leigh said...

bornfreev, I'm finishing up one crock now where the feta has been stored in olive oil for about a year. As long as the cheese remains submerged, it's good. If I need to, I top the crock off to keep the cheese covered. Both the oil and the cheese remain very tasty. And this is in the southeastern US in an un-air-conditioned pantry! You can refrigerate it, but of course, the olive oil then solidifies.

Toward the end, I find quite a bit of whey under the oil in the bottom of the crock. I guess the cheese still sheds moisture over time, but the oil remains on top. It's extremely tangy, but can be used in something where a tangy flavor is appreciated.

I've tried storing feta in both olive oil and brine, but prefer the oil. Brine works really well, but the cheese gets too salty after awhile. Plus, the water in the brine evaporates, so you can get crystallized salt on the sides of the crock, plus have to keep adding more water.

This would be easy to do in a smaller container, like a wide-mouth quart canning jar. I would just keep it out of the light.

Besides pizza, I use the oil for roasting vegetables. Makes them extra yummy!

Leigh said...

Edit for 2nd paragraph, last sentence,

"The whey is extremely tangy, but can be used in something where a tangy flavor is appreciated.