my recipes,: Pizza

Spinach etc. pizza

It was Friday night, and not wanting to go out, but wanting something easy and comforting, I decided on Pizza. This one went as follows: Your favorite crust, risen, punched, and stretched to fit your stone. A little olive oil straight on the dough. Then your sauce of choice topped with a lot of fresh spinach. Then mozzarella, pepperoni, smoked ham, and red onions, lots of Parmesan along with any spices and herbs you want to include. Bake at 475 for about 10-15 minutes or until cheese gets a little brown and crispy. KC got sidetracked from our conversation with each bite.

Tomato Basil Pizza

Easy:
Basic dough rolled out (recipe below)
pizza sauce spread
fresh basil torn and distributed
cheese
tomatoes
parmesean
salt, pepper,

Like unto margarita pizza. I just didn't have fresh Mozzarella so this was my variation.

L'Academie de Cuisine's Pizza Dough

2 c water, luke warm

1 ½ t yeast

2 T olive oil

2 t salt

5-6 cups flour

1. Combine yeast and water in a mixing bowl. Stir to dissolve the yeast.

2. Add the olive oil and first two cups of flour. Add salt on top of flour as not to disturb the yeast. Stir together and add another 2 – 1 1/2 cups of flour making sure to reserve 1 cup for bench flour. Mix together well.

3. Pour out onto a flour surface and knead for 5 minutes adding flour ass needed.

4. Let the dough proof in a greased bowl until doubled in size, about 1 ½ hours.

5. Punch down and shape flatten out into any shape you want your pizza to be. I roll mine right onto my pizza stone with a little cornmeal sprinkled on it.

6. Bake at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes.

This makes two medium pizza crusts. I like to use half the day I make it and freeze the other half for another night. Just defrost completely and let it rise and then follow the recipe from step 5.

Mexican Pizza

I'm a HUGE fan. I'm telling you. When is Mexican food NOT good? I have so many recipes I want to post from many meals ago, but this was last night, and I couldn't wait to post it.

So, I made the good old salsa, crock-pot shredded pork the same way that many of us have made it. I guess it might be more well know to be made with chicken. It's much like the bbq chicken below, but instead I made it with a pork loin and salsa verde. I made a lot so I had a lot to play around with for other meals. We had it as soft Tacos the first night. I was feeling Pizza since I usually do it when we make bbq pork/chicken. But since the pork had the lovely Mexican flavors from the salsa, I thought maybe a cornmeal crust would help with the all around Mexican flavor. Lo and behold, someone has thought of this before, as I found when googling around for a cornmeal pizza crust. Here's what I did.You'll need:
One recipe Cornmeal Pizza Dough(we only used half and froze the other half, and I went ahead and used some wheat flour , like the recipe said, but I think you'd be able to get the cornmeal flavor better with all while flour.)
Shredded salsa pork (pork loin and salsa verde in a crock pot for about 7 hours)
more salsa verde
tomatoes
red onions
cheese
black beans
corn (this and the beans were acutally left over from our tacos. I had cooked them with an onion and a sprinkling of the same spices as below.)
cilantro
lettuce
cumin
chili powder
garlic power
s&p
cilantro-lime dressing (Made famous by Cafe Rio. The recipe can be found many places, though I used the one found here. I used like 3 times the amount of lime juice the said, and next time I'll use half sour cream, half mayo, instead of all mayo like the recipe says. Still so good.)

Roll your dough on a pizza stone that has been sprayed and sprinkled with more cornmeal. Spread a little salsa on as a base. Add as much pork as you'd like. Follow with the corn/beans, red onions, tomatoes, more salsa if you'd like, the cheese and the spices. Bake in a 475 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is baked, and the ingredients are warmed through. Cut into slices and serve with lettuce, cilantro (or any garnishes/flavor additions) and a good drizzle of the dressing. Oh, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed each bite. And, you probably need to eat this pizza with a fork.
The best part is, we STILL have tons of pork left. I'm thinking Navajo tacos. Tonight.