Tag Archives: pizza

Pizza Stones

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pizzacraft-pizza-stoneI own a very large, thick, and durable pizza stone made by Pizzacraft. It can be used in the kitchen oven or on your BBQ grill, not that my BBQ grill is large enough for my pizza stone but smaller sizes are available. This makes it very versatile if you need to use it for baking on your BBQ grill if you have to.

I will never buy a cheap or thin pizza stone again, they always end up cracking even under proper use. They just are not worth it. After going through a few cheap stones you would have saved money just getting a thick premium pizza stone.

Instead of using pizza peel and the cornmeal process to place the pizza on the stone, I use parchment paper and a flat edged cookie sheet. I roll out the dough on parchment paper that has been lightly oiled with olive oil, let it rise, top the pizza, slide the cookie sheet under the parchment paper, transfer it to the oven and slide the parchment paper with pizza off the cookie sheet onto the hot pizza stone, bake pizza, and finally slide the cookie sheet under the parchment paper to remove the pizza from the stone. This process works like a dream for me, anyone else use parchment paper for their pizza baking?

51tWcdxElTL[1]I have also seen a few steel pizza stones that look like they could a great option as well. They are said to be virtually indestructible and can double as a stove top grill or be used on the BBQ grill as well. I would love to try one, have any of you had experiences with a Baking Steel?

Spinach Artichoke Kamut Pizza

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Spinach Artichoke Pizza with KAMUT Crust

Pizza Dough Rolled Out

Pizza Dough Rolled Out

Half-Baked Pizza Dough Topped

Half-Baked Dough Topped

One thing that I really enjoy using for pizza dough is KAMUT flour, it adds such a great taste. I commonly use a half KAMUT half white flour combo for a light textured crust with the wonderful flavor of KAMUT.

I could probably pull off a 100% KAMUT crust but I am not a purest and I like this recipe better right now. I based my recipe off of whole wheat pizza recipe I found from Donna Miller that I have been using for about a year now. I have altered this recipe several times now but the recipe below is what I like most.

KAMUT Pizza Crust

When I buy pizza, I really like Papa John’s Spinach Alfredo Pizza with bacon, spinach is a great pizza ingredient. Recently I found this recipe for Spinach Artichoke pizza that has just become my new favorite toppings. Combine the Spinach Artichoke with homemade KAMUT pizza crust and I am loving life, and so is whoever we invite over to share it with us.

On with the recipes…

Kamut Pizza Dough
 
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Makes 2 large thick pizza crusts.
Author:
Ingredients
  • 1½ cups hot tap water
  • 4 tablespoons white sugar
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
  • ¼ teaspoon onion powder
  • 2 cups KAMUT flour (freshly milled)
  • 2 cups all-purpose white flour
  • ½ teaspoon yeast
Instructions
  1. Start the night before and bake the next day for lunch or dinner.
  2. Add all ingredients into the mixer except for the all-purpose white flour and yeast.
  3. Mix on low for 30 seconds.
  4. Add the all-purpose what flour to mixer bowl and add yeast on top of the flour.
  5. Mix on medium speed for 3½ minutes, add a little more flour if you feel it is needed.
  6. Remove dough from mixer and place in a greased bowl that is 3 times the size of the dough.
  7. Cover bowl lightly with plastic wrap and let rise over night.
  8. The next morning, dust the counter top with some flour and dump the dough out onto the floured surface.
  9. Divide the dough in half.
  10. Form each piece into a ball by pushing the edges into the bottom center of the dough until the top is a smooth round shape.
  11. pinch the bottom together and place each dough ball into a separate zip-lock bag with some air in each bag.
  12. Placed bagged dough in the fridge for use later, at least 30 minutes.
  13. Remove dough from fridge and roll each out onto a piece of parchment paper, leaving the edge a little thicker than the rest.
  14. Place pizza stone in oven and pre-heat to 425 degrees.
  15. Let oven pre-heat for 30 minutes.
  16. Transfer parchment paper with rolled out dough into the oven (flat cookie sheet works well for this) and bake for 4 minutes, then remove from oven. Repeat this step for 2nd pizza dough.
  17. Top half-baked pizza crust with sauce, toppings and cheese.
  18. Bake for 8-12 more minutes, until bottom of crust is well browned but not burnt.

 
Spinach Artichoke Pizza Toppings
 
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This makes enough sauce for about 2 large pizzas.
Author:
Ingredients
  • ¾ cup heavy cream
  • 6 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons cream cheese
  • ¾ cup fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
  • 2 tablespoons granular Parmesan, the stuff in the can (or use more Parmesan cheese)
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 6 ounces fresh spinach leaves, chopped smaller
  • 1 can artichoke hearts, rinsed and dried and chopped into 8ths
  • Dash Italian seasoning
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • About 1½ cups mozzarella cheese to top pizza
Instructions
  1. Add butter, heavy cream, and cream cheese to a sauce pan and stir over low heat until fully melted.
  2. Add grated and granular Parmesan cheese to sauce pan.
  3. Stir together and continue to cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  4. Cook spinach with 2 tablespoons water over medium low heat until wilted.
  5. Drain spinach and squeeze spinach dry in a few paper towels.
  6. Add spinach to sauce and stir well.
  7. Spread sauce over pizza crust and top with mozzarella cheese and artichoke.

 

Spinach artichoke pizza topping compliments whole wheat pizza crust quite well also, or any other pizza crust you want to put it on.

artichoke-pizza-3

No Yeast? No Problem! (+ Pizza)

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sourdough starter

I have been seeing “sourdough” quite a bit lately on some of the food blogs I check up on. There are supposedly several benefits to using sourdough (aka natural yeast) rather than commercial yeast, I won’t get into these benefits but you can research them for yourself. Seeing all these sourdough posts got me thinking, WHAT IF I RAN OUT OF YEAST? What if I could not get any more yeast? What would I do? The answer is simple, I can capture my own wild yeast by creating a sourdough starter.

There are many sourdough starter methods out there but I found a simple one that just uses water and flour. You just mix flour with water, let it sit for 12 hours and feed it flour and water again. You keep feeding it flour and water every 12 hours and about 3 days in your starter will start getting bubbles in it, this is captured wild yeast. The method I used was from ebook “Sourdough from A to Z” which is similar the process in this video (click for video) but the ebook is much better in my opinion.

I decided I had to try this in-case I needed to do it. I used freshly ground whole wheat flour from my WonderMill grain mill and in about a week I had an active sourdough starter. The process was simple, the hard part was remembering to feed it every 12 hours or so. I also found that if you keep your sourdough well fed, it will not have a sour taste.

Our Little Pizza Princess

Our Little Pizza Princess

Last night, I added half of the starter to a pizza dough recipe I have used in the past. It took a little guessing to adjust the flour and water of the recipe for the addition of my sourdough starter since it was not a sourdough recipe. I let the dough rise overnight and baked pizza for lunch the next day. It worked wonderfully and tasted great.

I am definitely going to keep my sourdough starter going and use it in some other recipes for fun. The topping for this pizza was probably the best I have tried yet, Spinach Artichoke with a homemade sauce. I’ve mentioned before that I am an artichoke lover, and I am always on the lookout for a new artichoke recipe.

Spinach Artichoke Whole Wheat Pizza

Spinach Artichoke Whole Wheat Pizza

Several items I used in this post are things I store in my food storage such as canned artichoke, whole wheat, water, and shredded cheese. We have also started a vegetable garden this year and our spinach is already starting to grow. Just trying to keep true to “storing what I eat and eating what I store”.

And if you ever run out of yeast you now know you can capture your own. I suggest you give it a try and become familiar to the way mankind did before commercial yeast was available.

I also shared this post on Bake Your Own Bread linkup.