Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Pictures of homemade pizza

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[Scroll down for luscious pizza photos]

We go through phases with pizza. I made it a lot when the kids were much younger - such a novelty for them, playing with the dough, spreading the sauce, sprinkling the cheese. And then, I don't know, we kind of forgot about it.

But it's reappeared in the past few months, maybe because our kids' tastes in pizza toppings is finally catching up with ours. Michael and the boys always want bacon on their pizzas. I can take or leave the bacon, but I love bitter greens. We've all been enjoying the green garlic pizza I wrote about in my LA Cooking Examiner column last week. And when I found chanterelles for $10 a pound at the farmers market last week, I knew mushroom pizza was on the menu for lunch.

I would give you a recipe for my pizza dough, but I do it by feel now. It's more or less two teaspoons of yeast, three cups of flour, a healthy teaspoon of sea salt, and a slosh (maybe a quarter cup) of olive oil. Water until it's the right consistency. Let the mixer go, with the dough hook, a good 10 minutes, or even 15 if you've got the patience. Rise, divide, roll or stretch, done.

The pizzas below have no sauce; I spread a thin, thin layer of anchovy paste on the dough before adding the toppings and cheese. And another recently discovered technique seems to be working for me: I preheat my baking sheets in a blazing hot oven. I don't own a pizza peel, so I roll and top the dough on parchment. When I'm ready to bake, I carry the parchment to the oven (carefully), slide out the rack, and place it on the baking sheet. Or I bring the hot baking sheet to the counter and slide the parchment from there.

So, without further ado, pizza pictures, as promised.

Pizza with bacon and green garlic - my somewhat picky younger son preferred this one

  
I roasted the chanterelles in a hot oven before putting them on the pizza to intensify their flavor


 
Pizza with bacon and chanterelles - Michael's favorite

 
Sauteed chopped purple Russian kale

 
Pizza with green garlic and kale - this one was all mine

8 comments:

The Diva on a Diet said...

Erika ... these look heavenly! :)

Jocelyn said...

man...those do look heavenly. When we made our homemade pizzas..they were too doughy and soft. I need to figure cooking them out to get the crunchy yummy pizza :)

Erika Kerekes said...

Diva - thank you!

Jocelyn - I've found that pre-heating the baking sheet keeps the dough from rising too much, so the pizzas stay thinner and less doughy. I also roll mine out very, very thin. If I remember, I brush them with olive oil before topping. But I think it's mostly the preheating of the baking sheet that keeps the pizza from rising once it's in the oven.

Krissy @ The Food Addicts said...

i absolutely love making homemade pizza. nothing better than controlling what ingredients you want on it! btw, not sure if we got to chat at the haiti fundraiser on sunday, but just thought i'd drop by your blog to say hi!

Erika Kerekes said...

Krissy, thanks for stopping by! I actually couldn't make it to the StirIt28 fundraiser (and yes I'm disappointed), so no, we didn't chat there, but I hope to meet you and all the other food bloggers who were there really soon.

Erin said...

YUMMY!!

TKTC said...

Oh Erika...pizza is GORGEOUS!!!

Erika Kerekes said...

Thanks for all the pizza compliments! We had the green garlic and bacon pizza AGAIN this weekend...might as well take advantage of the green garlic while we can get it, right?

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