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When we're going to be "in" for a Friday night, we often will make pizza. The whole family helps out and it's usually a lot of fun. We'll typically make two pizzas - a traditional cheese, sometimes with black olives (for the kids) and a modified "white" pizza for Mrs. 87 & I.

We get the dough from our favorite pizza shop - making that is too much work.

After we roll the dough out onto the pizza stone, I brush it liberally with olive oil and hit it with salt, pepper and oregano. A very light handful or so of shredded mozzarella goes on for a "base."

The topping is all sauteed in a large pan - butter and a bit of olive oil to start, of course. I start with white onions; I prefer to julienne the onions rather than dice them. Once they start to "sweat," I add the mushrooms and a good helping of minced garlic. Once the mushrooms have started to really soak up the liquid, in go a few big handfuls of fresh baby spinach. This doesn't take long at all to cook.

I don't dump the whole pan, because there's usually a lot of extra liquid. So i scoop out the goodies and spread them on the pizza, then cover the whole thing with a generous portion of shredded mozzarella. This time around we also added a few sliced olives that happened to be left over from the kids' pizza.

A quick trip to the oven and ... yummy!



Quick & fun (the kids love to decorate their pizza ... Catie likes to make smiley faces out of the olives).

Looks fantastic Karl!!

You SHOULD make your own crust SOMETIMES though... it's really the most important part of the pizza. One of my favorite crust recipes has oregano, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes baked right in. Mmmmmmmmm...

G:

Thanks.

On the dough ... yeah, I know, I know. But the local shop has great dough and time is an issue. Also, I'm not big on baking, in general, so ...

But I'm getting a real urge to try making empanadas, so I'll have to get my hands into some dough soon.

Making the dough is my favorite part of making pizza. It is the most important part of a pizza, and the toughest to perfect. The last batch of dough I made was by far my best effort...I was able to get it so thin without tearing that I could see through it. BG has some excellent pizza, but I still like to make my own. I just wish I had a brick pizza oven. My electric oven struggles to see 450, when I want closer to 900! I've heard of people tampering with their ovens to be able to cook on the self-clean cycle, but I'm not quite prepared to go that far.

Also I've never heard of anyone using your process before. If it yields good results, cool, but it seems really weird to me to stretch the dough out on the stone. The stone should usually be preheated in the oven...otherwise it's not going to come up to temp before the pizza is even done baking is it? Does your crust get crispy? I don't know, just never heard of anyone doing it that way. I always preheat the stone with the oven, then stretch the dough on the peel, top it, and transfer to the stone. Of course, as with anything, there is more than one way to skin a cat. I could just be reading you wrong too...

hammb:

We "warm" the stone, enough to where we use oven mitts to get it out before the dough goes down. So we stretch the dough on the kitchen table, take the stone out of the oven, place the dough down, and go from there.

Our family isn't big on a CRUNCH when they eat pizza, so crispy isn't a high priority. But I don't want it too doughy, either. This seems to accomplish a happy balance.

I've cooked on "clean" before, FWIW.

1987alum wrote:hammb:

We "warm" the stone, enough to where we use oven mitts to get it out before the dough goes down. So we stretch the dough on the kitchen table, take the stone out of the oven, place the dough down, and go from there.

Our family isn't big on a CRUNCH when they eat pizza, so crispy isn't a high priority. But I don't want it too doughy, either. This seems to accomplish a happy balance.

I've cooked on "clean" before, FWIW.

Cool man. As I said everyone has their own tastes. I don't even make pizza the same way every time.

As to my oven, it's got a safety lock so if I put it on clean the door won't open until it comes back down to normal temps. The only way to cook on clean would be to disable that lock, and I'm not quite prepared to do that

Rather just have a few thousand bucks to spend on an outdoor clay wood fired pizza oven...wouldn't that be freaking cool!?

Something like this would be sweet as hell, no?

http://www.fornobravo.com/store/Artigia ... 16168.html

first for me would be a smoker.

But I think I could put a brick oven to very good use on a regular basis.

I saw a chef on food network cook venison and a really good-looking potato dish in one.

1987alum wrote:first for me would be a smoker.

Here ya go!

http://www.amazon.com/Weber-731001-Smok ... 907&sr=8-2

1987alum wrote:first for me would be a smoker.

Or build one for under $50:

http://lifehacker.com/5350455/build-a-b ... oplay=true

Chase:

Me build something?

I'm much handier with a credit card than a wrench.