Yes, We Cook!

Oh, yes, I know… I’m a slacker.  I haven’t been posting all that much simply because I haven’t had much interest in cooking these days. Not exactly sure why, it just hasn’t been “ringing my bell” as it were.

A post move funk, anti-cook, funk perhaps?  Lazy, maybe? Unmotivated, definitely.

Over the past few months JT, the one time contributor to the site and all around good guy, and I have had an ongoing discussion about a quick and easy bread recipe. After messing around with the recipe (well, changes here and there) I decided on this a quick and easy pizza crust.

Please note, you’ll need a pizza stone and parchment paper for this recipe.

For the crust you’ll need:

1 1/2 Cups Flour

1 Cup warm water

1 tsp yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp marjoram

This is rather easy – mix you dries, add your oil and water, then add your marjoram and mix one again.

When fully mixed, you’ll have a very “wet” dough…and by “wet” I mean it will be very sticky and will not keep a shape or appear like normal bread or pizza dough (like the one seen here).

Cover it up and place it in the fridge for about 3 hours. Now it is time for the sauce.

Needed:

1 tbsp minced garlic

12 oz of crushed tomatoes

2 tbsp of tomato paste

2 tsp salt

4 tsp sugar

1 tsp oregano

So, add your crushed tomatoes and tomato paste to a small pot and heat over a medium flame. You’ll want to have the liquid from the crushed tomatoes to reduce by a 3rd to a half.  When this starts, add the remainder of the ingredients… and make sure to mix.

Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

Let’s fast forward and assume your dough is ready… At this point you’ll want to have your pizza stone in the oven.  Pre-heat that sucker up to 550 degrees.  Now take your parchment paper and brush it with olive oil, then spoon our your dough.

Use a spoon (oiled if the dough is sticky) to get size and shape you want it.

Here is the question you need to ask yourself at this point – do I want a crisp crust or more a moist crust as the baking process for each will be different.

If you want a crisp crust, when the oven is ready, slide the parchment paper onto your pizza stone and bake your crust until it begins to brown (usually about 5 mins or less at 550).  At this point, slide the rack out and put your sauce and toppings onto the pizza and cook for and additional 5 to 7 minutes.

Please remember to watch the pizza as it may quickly depending on the power of your oven…. just because it tells you it’s 550 degrees doesn’t mean that it was it really is in there.

I took the most crust approach for my pizza and added my sauce, toppings and placed it right into the oven for about 12 minutes.

Another thing of note – regardless of what crust type you would like, you will want to pre-cook your meat due to how short the pizza may be baking in your oven. It’s that whole safe than sorry thing.

Here is the finished product.

And your required food porn close up…

So there you go.  A quick pizza recipe full of taste and easy to make.

Related posts:

1. Homemade Veggie Pizza
2. Chicken Basil Calzones
3. Orange Chocolate Finger Cookies
4. Dolly Bars

Tags: Dough, Pizza

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Pizza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.