Pizzas Margherita and Broccoli-Riccotta

Yeeeessssss pizza night. We could not stop at just one. Both were delicious. Here are some recipes - plan ahead if you want to make pizza, cause the dough needs to rest overnight.

Pizza Dough
from Food & Wine magazine

1 envelope active dry yeast
2 cups warm water (90° to 105°)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
Extra-virgin olive oil

To make the dough, combine the sugar, 1/2 c of the water, and the yeast and let it stand until it gets foamy, about 5 minutes. Then add the salt and the flour and stir until everything is incorporated and it looks like, well, dough. Knead it until it's silky, adding more flour if you need to, and then put yr doughball in a lightly oiled bowl, brush it with oil, and let it refrigerate overnight.

Making the Pizzas:

To learn how to make dough into pizza rounds, let us refer you here, to what is perhaps the most specific blog I've ever seen ever.

Preheat yr oven to 500 degrees, and let yr pizza stone heat for 45 minutes or so.



For the Pizza Margherita (seen above):

extra virgin olive oil
diced tomatoes
fresh mozzarella
garlic
fresh basil

The EVOO went on first, brushed over the whole round, then the tomatoes, then the cheese, then the garlic. I don't know how important the order is, but it seemed logical. The basil goes on right when you take the pizza out of the oven. One note: before you put the tomatoes on your pizza (and the same goes for the ricotta in the next recipe) you should probably try to squeeze out as much of their moisture as possible, because this made the bottom of our pizza a little bit soggy.


For the Pizza Bianca (white pizza with broccoli and ricotta):

broccoli (cut really small)
fresh mozzarella
part-skim ricotta cheese
EVOO
garlic
romano cheese

Again, EVOO first, then mozz., then some ricotta, then broccoli, then more ricotta, then garlic. The romano went on about 5 minutes into the baking process.

Each pizza bakes for about 8-10 minutes, or until the dough gets nice and browned.

There was a slight issue getting the pizzas from our makeshift pizza peel (a baking sheet) onto the stone in the oven, but we found that putting a lot of flour/cornmeal on it and having two people there to move it was how we had to do it. If youve got a peel, it will be easier. Gabe out.

NEXT: Carrot soup!