A special thanks goes out to Georgia and her husband Andrew for my fabulous new William-Sonoma pizza/baking stone that I bought with their very generous gift card. I love new toys, I always want to use them right away. Right now!
So as soon as I got the pizza stone I was dreaming up lots of great pizzas and breads I could make. I went on my usual search of my favorite blogs for pizza dough recipes and found smitten kitchen's "really simple pizza dough." Perfect! I promptly made the dough, only to realize that my pizza stone was in the trunk of my car, FREEZING, and may not respond well (read: crack my new baby) to suddenly being heated up. Sigh, pizza would just have to wait till the next day.
I can be impatient though, so promptly at lunch time, I grilled some chicken, caramelized half a red onion, chopped up some cherry tomatoes and crumbled some goat cheese. Pizza deliciousness!
Lately though, I've been reading about a lot of detox's fellow bloggers are doing as a result of holiday excesses. I'm not sure I was doing much excessive anything over the holidays so much as excessive eating for the last six months. Perhaps a detox has been long in the works. And while things like the Master Cleanse always appeal to me, I think I'd give up after the first day. So, though it sounds gimmicky, I'm going to the try the Gwyneth Paltrow (GOOP) detox. Though I'm likely to add in more to eat than it suggests, since I don't want my body to go into starvation mode. I'll be sure to blog about it, but the week-long diet and recipes are posted here.
**update**
So, after I posted this, I remembered that I have reservations with my parents to go to Peter Luger's - famous steak joint in Brooklyn - on Thursday. I definitely can't eat steak on a detox.. So right now I'm weighing starting the detox next week or doing it for the 4 days before steak-eating. I'm concerned eating steak right off a detox will tank my stomach.
Like my rationalizations? Detox is postponed till next week :) As a result, I'll likely be posting some cake recipe in the next week.
Happy New Year!
Really Simple Pizza Dough
(courtesy of smitten kitchen, find the original here)
Makes enough for one small, thin crust pizza. Double it if you like your pizza thick and bready.
1 1/2 cups flour (can replace up to half of this with whole wheat flour)
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water (may need up to 1 or 2 tablespoons more)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Stir dry ingredients, including yeast, in a large bowl.
Add water and olive oil, stirring mixture into as close to a ball as you can.
Dump all clumps and floury bits onto a lightly floured surface and knead everything into a homogeneous ball. If you are finding this step difficult, leave the dough in a lightly-floured spot, put the empty bowl upside-down on top of it and come back in 2 to 5 minutes.
Knead it for just a minute or two. Lightly oil the bowl, dump the dough in, turn it over so all sides are coated, cover it in plastic wrap and leave it undisturbed for an hour or two, until it has doubled in size.
Dump it back on a floured counter, and gently press the air out of the dough with the palm of your hands. Fold the piece into an approximate ball shape, and let it sit under that plastic wrap for 20 more minutes.
Sprinkle a pizza stone or baking sheet with cornmeal and preheat your oven to its top temperature. Roll out the pizza, toss on whatever topping and seasonings you like.
Bake it for about 10 minutes until it’s lightly blistered.
2 comments:
My daughter gave me a pizza stone for Christmas as well...exceleltn for baking bread too.
I really prefer making pizzas at home. I get to manage my own pizza and put whatever I want! And I find it more delicious.
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