Never Eat Pizza Alone

Two of my favorite epicurean indulgences are those of wine and pizza. I'm sure this is of no surprise to any on this blog, but part of the delight in both is that they're always best when consumed with people dear to you. So, this month's challenge was irresistible — much like the food and photos (photos of food, of course) on this site!

I have a penchant for making things as simply and cheaply as possible, typically placing my ad-hoc recipes in the "from scratch" domain. This kitchinspiration is as simple and cheap as you can get: dough from scratch, sauce from scratch, top as desired. I'm there.

As the title claims, however, you should never eat pizza alone! So I called upon a good friend and climbing co-patriot, Joe, and his wonderful fiancee, Colleen. They proposed a dessert pizza and offered up Colleen's kitchen; I decided upon a simple pizza in the thicker style I grew up with, topped with lightly-salted mozzarella, mushrooms, and roasted bell peppers.

Pizza Uno

The dough is ever-evolving, but based on the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, a wonderful book by baker duo J. Hertzberg and Z. Francois. This particular rendition was a spur-of-the-moment light wheat bread in the following ratio (modulate as needed):

• 6 cups water


• 4 tablespoons salt


• 3 tablespoons yeast


• 3 cups whole wheat flour


• 10 cups white flour

The sauce was as random as it was successfully so — a gradual introduction of tomatoes over the course of a few hours; transforming into a thick, chunky stew of tomato-y goodness. I tossed in some mushrooms and an array of my favorite spices, including some basil I have growing around the house, and stuck a fork in part 2 — the sauce was done.

In preparation for getting together and assembling both pizza varieties at Colleen's, I roasted the peppers in my kitchen that afternoon. This is a wonderful way to smooth out the sharper, more acidic tendencies of bell peppers, and is easily accomplished in even my sub-par oven.

When we convened to assemble the pizza, we decided to experiment a little. Colleen has a Pizza Pizazz, a nifty gizmo for cooking pizza without a full oven — place the pizza on a round pan that sits between a pair of heating coils; and as the pan spins, the pizza cooks. Shiny! We decided to prepare one pizza on the round pan and cook using the Pizazz, and the other in an ordinary cookie sheet to go into the oven at 450 until my eyeballs declared it done.

Pizza Dos

This was Joe's baby, so I'll keep it simple:

Hehe, the desert pizza is far from a family recipe..it was just an experiment my mom found somewhere. Feel free to post it.

Recipe is

Ingredients:
-Pillsbury sugar cookie tube (I know, classy, eh?..it actually gives better results than homemade cookiedough though)
-LemonJuice 2 tblespoons (roughly half a lemon's worth)
-Sugar
-8 oz Cream Cheese
-All the fruit you want: Bananas, strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, work well. Melons don't so much.
-Salt
-cornstarch


Directions:
1: spread cookie tube over a greased cookie sheet. It doesn't need to fill the whole thing and should be 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Bake it for 10 minutes. let it cool.

2: FROSTING: mix sugar with 8oz cream cheese. Do this to taste, starting with 1/4 cup and add more as needed. Probably will be between 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sugar. Set aside.

3: GLAZE: mix lemon juice, 1/4 cup sugar, a pinch of salt together. Let it start getting hot and add cornstarch (I think its two tablespoons, might be a 1/4 cup though..basically it's just to let it get a little thicker. Start with less and add as needed till it's got a bit of a syrupyness to it). Stir a lot and let it simmer for a minute or two to mix properly. Let this cool in the fridge.

Wait until glaze is cool.
THEN:
Assembly; save this step as long as you can before serving.

4: spread cream cheese frosting on cookiedough!
5: Cut up all the fruit except the banana! Slice stawberries in half, skin kiwis and slice into discs, leave blueberries whole. Don't cut banana yet.

6: Arrange the fruit on the frosting; pushing down a little to keep the fruit in place. Save space for the banana slices. When you're ready, cut the banana and place it as quickly as you can. It browns fast and looks sad.

7:brush the tops of the fruit with the glaze. Use sparingly but be sure to hit all the fruit with a little of it, especially the bananas. This will keep the fruit looking perky a little longer. You'll have a ton of extra glaze.
8:Serve!

I think that's it.

-joe

The results were terrific! See for yourself!