Pizza Week, Entry 1

Hi Everyone!

It's me, your friendly neighborhood Silver Spooner, slowly chugging away at some more delicious SS recipies.  This week I have been luxuriating in my very own, brand new, big girl Kitchenaid.  I've had trysts with other mixers, I even briefly had an antique kitchenaid that gave its life making royal icing.  Poor Kitchenaid.  All that is behind me now.  The world is my oyster; by world I mean difficult recipes involving mixing things, and by oyster I mean I don't have to mix them by hand anymore, or worse, avoid them entirely.  So thank you, again to all who gave me a gift certificate to BB and B.  You made this part of my life possible.  Moving on. . . .

Pizza dough, you tricky temptress.  My father is a terrific pizza maker.  He would make us pizza pretty frequently, usually with store bought dough, or Naples pizza dough (Guilford People will know to which business I refer) when they were willing to part with it.  On a couple of amazing occassions, he made his own pizza dough, confidently, surely as if he had been doing it his whole life.  I was petrified to make pizza dough because I am not all that good with baking and I hate being precise.  As well, my father set the bar so high with his kitchen successes, and wasn't here to help me. 

With a deep breath I piled 1 and 1/4 cup flour, some salt, and 1/2 cup warm water mixed with yeast to my afore mentioned mixer and mixed.   A dough was born.  At first attempt, this dough was very sticky.  I coated my hands with flour and added a tad more flour to the mix before setting it under a bowl and allowing it to rise for three hours. 

Well folks, I wasn't sure this whole dough thing was going to work out, and I had 3 hours to agonize over it, so I had my husband pick up some pre-made dough at whole foods.   It ended up rising, kinda, so I rolled it out and made Sausage Pizza a la SS.  I crumbled a package of hot sausage into a saute pan and cooked it through, then combined it with 1/2 cup of romano cheese.  Separately, I cut 5 tomatoes into chunks and sprinkled them onto the dough. 

The SS instructs us to bake the crust for 15-20 minutes before adding the meat topping, so I popped my dough into a 425 oven and waited to see the result.  In the meantime I used the pre-made dough to whip up a quick Margarita Pizza.  The Whole foods dough was harder to roll out and much thicker than the Silver Spoon version. 

After 20 minutes I added the sausage topping to the SS crust and put it in the oven for another ten minutes.  It was just the way I like pizza, thin crust, ample topping, fresh tomatoes and a spicy zing from the sausage.  The Margarita went in the oven completely topped, because SS told me to do it like that.   In contrast that pizza was wetter and not my ideal preference of crust thickness. 

All in all, dough making was a success and I want to keep making dough until I master it.  That is why I will be chipping away at all the pizza recipes this week until they are done.  I already made 2 more pizzas, with 2 more SS doughs and they were pretty good.  So stay tuned, and hear about more dough making trials and pizza making tribulations!