Monday, September 5, 2011

Summer garden pizza

I don't normally do foodie posts here, though two of my most-viewed-ever entries have been baking related, so maybe that tells me something.

Today being the Labor Day holiday in the US, it seems especially fitting to dine on the harvest of our fields. In our case, the harvest of our extensive deck-based container gardens augmented by produce from the local fruit and veggie market.

I started off with a ball of Overnight Pizza Dough (from a 2009 Bon Appétit recipe by Tori Ritchie). I like this recipe because it makes six pizza-sized balls of dough, freezes well, and makes a solid crisp crust, especially when pre-baked.

To this I added some fresh red and orange cherry tomatoes, basil, and parsley from the garden.


A good starting point. I roll out out the dough (a bit of rubber non-skid carpet backing keeps the peel from scooting while rolling!) to cover the peel, while pre-heating the oven and pizza stone to 500°F., then brush the pizza with olive oil and rub a couple cloves of roasted garlic across it. Finally, a light sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese, and it's ready for a five minute pre-bake once the oven reaches full temp.



While the pizza pre-bakes, it's time to sauté up a shallot.



Then, pull out the nicely bubbly-browned pizza, ready for toppings.




At this point, the crust is already crisp, but not yet fully done. I layered the sautéd shallots, sliced mushrooms, sliced cherry tomatoes, chopped basil and parsley, a bit of feta cheese and a light dusting of shredded Beecher's Flagship cheese. Here's what that looks like before it goes into the oven:




And here's what it looks like when it comes out about 10 minutes later:




Quick (especially since the pizza dough was already made and all I had to do was pull a ball out of the freezer an hour or so before making the pizza) and delicious. Not very many minutes after it came out of the oven, we were down to this:




And that piece didn't last much longer. Just the right amount of pizza for two.

- Posted via Hermes.

2 comments:

ceneece said...

That looks amazingly yummy, Dad! :D

Kevin said...

It was! :-)

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