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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Two Different Pizza Dough Recipes & My First Book Review for the Food Book Challenge

Has it been a year since I promised to find that pizza dough recipe that I adapted? Almost.

Here it is.

From the smitten kitchen, a very nice food blog.

I didn't really expect to be cooking pizza on a cloudy and cool February Friday a week ago, but The Mister didn't want to explore a new pizzeria in town and heck, I was jonesing for pepperoni pie.

I bought the ingredients a while back, basically stuff that keeps for a couple months or longer: A jar of really good pizza sauce, dry moisture motz, and pepperoni. The only thing I had to make was the crust. By the way, I've tried many pre-made pizza crusts and they have all been pretty awful, but if you know of something that works for you, please share. I'm always on the look-out for an easy dinner.

In today's rendition I doubled the pizza dough recipe except for the salt. I also used white wine not sake like I have in the past, and I used more wine than usual. I used my KitchenAid with a dough hook to kneed the dough, and I cook the pizza at a lower temperature for a longer time.

There is no product picture this time around and the crust was at once too hard and too bread-y. My mistake may have been rushing the rising process or the fact that the house was too cold for a good rise.

This Sunday I thought I'd try again only this time use Ree's Basic Pizza Dough recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

The cookbook is my first book in the food book challenge. As a good read and selection of recipes, I rate this book very high, maybe just a half a star short of perfect. The reason for the down grade is that although the pizza came out looking gorgeous, it didn't taste all that wonderful. Maybe had I kept the dough for a day or two, the flavors would have developed more. Sigh.

Here's a picture of one of the pies.

3 comments:

Alicia said...

Well, it for sure looks beautiful!
As far as quick pizza dough. I know TJ's has some that many people like, I've not been thrilled.
If I need to get something I use Pillsbury French bread dough. It makes a rectangle pizza but it's not bad.

Jamie said...

Pizza is one of my favorite things to make and homemade crust makes it even better! Thanks so much for sharing your link on the My Baking Addiction Facebook page!

-Jamie

Judy said...

There used to be a pizza place in Santa Cruz that made square pizza, Alicia. Called Upper Crust, I think. Square is just as tasty as round :)

Thanks for visiting Jamie. What an honor! Your website is amazing. I love it!