Late Summer Eats

It had been too hot until recently to really cook much- every time I made bread the kitchen turned into a sauna. I am loving my new kitchen though- there's not much more counter space but there is way more space to move around and a dishwasher!

I made a perfect ciabatta with grilled veggies, fresh pesto and mozzarella. It doesn't get much better for summertime- toss veggies (I used tomatoes, red onion, squash, zucchini and peppers) with olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper and Italian seasoning and roast at 450, turning occasionally, for about half an hour. I always add some garlic at the end.











I realized the reason a lot of my bread loaves were coming out so dense and somewhat gummy was the overuse of wheat flour. I used almost all bread flour in this batch and it had big air holes, a beautiful somewhat chewy crumb and a nice crisp golden crust. I made one ciabatta, one pizza and a regular loaf and I have one left to freeze.

I had a package of tri-color gnocchi in the cupboard (or actually walk-in pantry!!!) so I tossed it with some veggie sausage, spinach, garlic and onions:

Two easy and delicious dinners!

Homemade Pizza

I really need to go get the "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day Book," but until then I've been reading their blog online: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ , and searching for variations on the recipe. I have made two pizzas now with the basic pizza dough recipe:

2 3/4 cups lukewarm water
1 1/2 tbl granulated yeast
1 1/2 tbl salt
1 tbl sugar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Mix first 5 ingredients with wooden spoon.
2. Gradually mix in yeast.
3. Same as the bread, allow to rest in non-airtight container for a few hours. This makes about 4 pizzas. Before using, pinch off grapefruit sized piece form into ball and let rest on counter at least 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 500.
5. Stretch and roll out with hands or dusted rolling pin, using cornmeal and flour to prevent sticking.
6. Top pizza and bake about 7-10 minutes, keeping an eye for crust to turn golden.

My kitchen is not yet equipped with a pizza peel OR a baking stone, so the first time I ended up with the dough sticking to my cutting board. I ended up dusting a cookie sheet with cornmeal and making the pizza directly on it. Normally, you prepare the pizza on the peel while the sheet or stone heats in the oven so the pizza cooks faster and more even. A little bit of the crust stuck when it came out but all in all it worked out ok and was delicious! A decent frozen pizza seems to run between $6 and $10 and these, depending on ingredients used are more like $4 and much tastier.
I made a mushroom/spinach/fresh mozzarella and an "eggplant parm" pizza with oven baked breaded eggplant, homemade tomato sauce, Italian cheese blend and fresh tomatoes. If you do use a cheese like fresh mozzarella, be sure to top pizza for only last minute of baking or it will melt to much (as mine did). Next I think I'll try a pizza with fake sausage and maybe one with avocado and fake bacon.


My food photography skills and camera are not up to par I know, but these are much tastier than they look!