Tuesday, April 20, 2010

pizza à la maison

The Dough


 Unbaked Bacon Pizza


 Baked 


 Andouille Sausage, Ricotta, Feta


I despise Mondays.  There's nothing worse than a Monday - unless you're on a tropical vacation and have a Mai Tai in your grasp..Mondays suck.  The only good part is driving home from work, plopping my butt on the couch, putting my feet up, and forgetting the day.

This was an unusually GOOD Monday..I made homemade pizza - crust/sauce/ricotta, AND the Stanley Cup Playoffs were/are on.  My 2 teams lost their games yesterday - I think I'm over it now - screaming at the TV really helped.  Dear neighbors:  There is no one in the house abusing me, I just get really emotional when I watch hockey.  Sorry about that.

Pizza numero uno: simple bacon and pepper pizza.  YUM.  The bacon needs a little fine-tuning I think in order to achieve a crust that isn't over-crisped, but it was still sinfully good.  The crust was saturated and crisped by the fat, and the bacon was slightly crunchy.  Bacon pizza...please come back one day!

Pizza numero dos: Andouille sausage, feta, homemade picante sauce and homemade ricotta (!!! holy shit !!!) I was worried that the ricotta wouldn't hold up to the bold ingredients, BUT the little fluffy ricotta clouds actually gave it the perfect balance.  It added a really nice subtle, mellow element to the BAM and the PAF!  It was so good.  You can drool now.

The Best Pizza Dough
3/4 cup hot water
3/4 cup milk
4 pinches sugar
1 tbsp (1 packet) yeast
1 tsp salt
3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp rye flour
3 tbsp wheat flour
approx. 4 - 5 Cups white flour

  • Add all ingredients except white flour into a mixing bowl and mix them up.
  • Add white flour until it turns to dough, not gooey any more, but doughy.
  • Heat oven to 100º then turn off.
  • Put a towel over mixing bowl/dough and put in oven for at least 1 hour to allow dough to rise.

Should make enough dough for three or four or five thin crust pizzas.

Cook pizzas in 450º oven until crust starts to turn golden-brown/sauce is a-bubblin'


Slightly larger batch:
1 1/4 cup hot water
1 1/4 cup milk
6 pinches sugar
1 1/2 tbsp (1 1/2 packet) yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
5-6 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp rye flour
4 tbsp wheat flour
5 1/2 - 6 Cups white flour


Wednesday, April 7, 2010

le dernier txoco à txori

I just LOVE a family style meal!  It's always a great opportunity to meet new people and to sample food that you might not ordinarily order from the menu.  It was Txori's last Txoco, but it will be etched on my palette eternally.
A 'txoco' is a gastronomic society traditional to the Basque country of Spain.  Its members are drawn from all sections of society, and they themselves organize the shopping and cooking. Mealtimes are relaxed with controversial subjects like politics usually avoided. But although most of the txocos allow women to join meals as guests, some stick to the all-male tradition - arguing that txocos offer men an escape from the Basque matriarchal culture.  ~ BBC News
We bid a warm and fond farewell to Txori and all the beautiful food we've put away.  Carolin, you are a genius, and we look forward to your future ventures!