Speechless

Nothing really to say here, except this pizza was exceptionally good. That is all.

Grilled Pizza

Friday night is pizza night. However, since this has been the case for a long time, we sometimes get sick of pizza. Rather than give up on our tradition, we decided to try something new. Grilled pizza! We watched videos on youtube of that Steven Raichlen dude, you know, the grill king, to learn how to make your dough not fall through the cracks. Turns out there is really no trick. You have to make it thin, but that is about it. Cook it till you get the fancy lines on one side, then flip it and put your toppings on. It is faster and way less messy in my kitchen.

Another fun development is baby pizza! We make a baby sized one and the kid scarfs it up. He will eat his whole pizza. He likes mushroom, pepper and onions, if you are curious. For my new style of pizza, I have been using BBQ sauce instead of Italian style, with chicken, bacon, onions, mushrooms and sometimes peppers. It is super good, and it compliments the smoky flavor from being grilled. I am all about pizza night these days!

Calzones

Usually friday night is pizza night. But we were looking for something (slightly) different so we decided to give calzones a try. I made the same dough that I always make, but everything else was (slightly) different. After some quick internet searching, we determined that calzones should be cooked at a lower temperature for a longer time than pizza. And we found some hints. For instance, most recipes didn't call for the sauce to be on the inside, and that you should brush the top with olive oil and stab it with a fork .

Tricks in hand, and baby asleep, we got going. I decided to pre-cook onions, mushrooms, garlic and Italian seasoning in olive oil for just a couple of minutes. Then I rolled out my dough, put the cooked mixture, pepperoni, parmesan, feta and mozzarella over half, and folded it up. I decided to use the extra oil from cooking the vegges for the top of the calzone, to add more flavor.

K popped it in the oven, and (slightly) less than 30 minutes later, dinner! For dipping, I just cooked a can of tomato sauce with extra garlic and Italian seasoning until it was warm.

The result was better than we ever imagined! I thought we made pretty mean pizza, but these calzones would kick our pizza's ass!

Pizza Night

Usually friday is pizza night, but since this week we had the ice cream feast, pizza was pushed back to saturday. I make the pizza dough from scratch. People think I am nutty, but it is so easy! Mix water and yeast, wait 10 minutes, mix in the rest of the ingredients and wait 30 more. That's it! Just as fast as ordering it in on a weekend. And way tastier.

I was being a little bad this week and had pepperoni. It had been so long since I've had it! We got some gigantic ones from the deli. They covered the whole top of my pizza. Either this, or the fact that the dough was a little thicker than normal caused me to end up with magic middles when I thought it was done. A few more minutes in the oven fixed that. Although the meat is all you can see, I actually have mushrooms, onions, orange peppers and feta on there too.

K makes his pizza as a pepper lovers. He put 3 or 4 different peppers on his, along with mushrooms and onions. He likes to put olive oil over the top of his to get the veggies to cook better. Since his pizza was second, he cooked it a minute or two longer to make sure it was all cooked the first time, instead of being like mine.

I highly suggest cooking your own pizza. You can put whatever, and however much of it you want on em, and once the dough is ready, its just a few minutes in the oven. Easy!