Savory Crust Pizza

Forgiveness asked, please, for being a half a day late with this post. (I normally look to have new posts up every Saturday morning, and occasionally even Friday evening.) Hopefully you will consider it worth the wait.


A sharp-eyed reader recently noted that, in my profile picture, I’m putting a pizza into the oven, and asked that sometime soon I post the recipe. I thought it was a great idea. And so, by special request and with great pleasure, I give you this week the gift of Savory Crust Pizza. And a great gift you will find it to be.


While just about everyone loves eating some form of pizza, the choices and combinations of topping can vary widely. And so, rather than being about one particular type of pizza, in order to be useful to a wide range of readers this recipe is really about two things:
• A delicious, savory crust that goes beyond being simply a holder for the toppings and brings a flavor of its own.
• General guidelines that will be helpful when applying toppings.



And therein is one of the great strengths of homemade pizza: the toppings can be custom- selected in combinations that go beyond those offered by a typical pizza parlor. (As a side note, since pizza bakes for a short time at a high temperature, it would also be easy to let children select and apply their own toppings to have as dinner only a short time later!)


This recipe uses bread flour. For any readers new to making pizza or working with dough in general, a brief flour primer may be helpful. Otherwise, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. Specialty flours aside, you’ll generally find three kinds of wheat flour in the supermarket: all-purpose flour, pastry flour (or cake flour), and bread flour. The difference is in their gluten content. Gluten is a complex string of proteins that, when developed by kneading, adds chewiness to the dough. When the dough is overworked, such as by being kneaded for too long, the chewiness becomes extreme and the dough becomes overly tough. For this reason, cakes and pastries, which need as little chewiness as possible, are made with pastry or cake flour, which has the lowest gluten content. Chewier items, such as breads, are made with bread flour, which has a high gluten content. (There’s also “high gluten” flour which has even more gluten than bread flour and that is often used for chewy breads like focaccia, but this is typically a restaurant supply house item you won’t find at your local supermarket.) And, as the name implies, the gluten content of all-purpose flour is somewhere in the middle.


When it’s time to let the dough rest and ferment, a room-temperature kitchen should be adequate. However, if you’re concerned your kitchen may be too cool for the doughs to ferment properly, here’s a useful baker’s trick: heat your oven to 200 degrees, turn off the heat, put the foil-covered bowls with the dough into the oven, close the door, and let the oven return to room temperature while the doughs ferment.



Finally, a note about saucing the pizza. The recipe below calls for each pizza to get 3 ounces of sauce. If you’ve never made pizza before, you might spread the sauce and, after looking at it, think that amount can’t possibly be enough, and add more. Please resist any temptation to do that. Once the pizza is baking with all the other toppings, you’ll find 3 ounces of sauce was just enough.


This recipe makes dough for three 16” diameter (or 11” x 17” rectangular) pizzas.


First, let’s make our savory dough:
In a bowl, whisk 2 packages (1/2 oz.) of dry yeast in 1 quart of 110 degree water. When the yeast has dissolved, add 1 teaspoon of sugar, then whisk in 1/2 cup olive oil.


In a large bowl, combine dry dough ingredients -  3 pounds of bread flour, 2 tablespoons of  salt, 1-1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder, ¼ cup dried oregano, and ¼ cup dried basil - in a large bowl and mix well. Gradually add the yeast mixture and mix just until the dry ingredients are incorporated, forming a sticky dough. Be careful not to overwork the dough.


In a stand mixer (using the dough hook) or by hand on a floured surface, knead the dough for about 5 minutes. If necessary, add a little more flour to make dough smooth and elastic.



Divide the dough into three pieces and round off. Place each in a separate oiled bowl, and cover the bowl with foil or plastic. Allow the doughs to ferment on the kitchen counter until at least doubled (about an hour). When doubled, the dough should hold the indentation when poked with a finger.


Now let’s make our pizza! (If you’re not using all three doughs right away, any you’re not using can be frozen for later use.)
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.



Apply a very light coating of olive oil to a 16” round or 11” x 17” pan. Dust the  pan with corn meal. Place a dough on the pan and press it over the surface of the pan, working toward the edges. Flatten all but a 1” border around the circumference.



Apply a very thin coat of olive oil to the surface of the dough, spread the sauce, and add the selected toppings. A few suggestions for your consideration:
• 1 large green pepper slice
• Cheese: Shred and combine 1-1/4 cups mozzarella, ¼ cup parmesan, ½ cup provolone
• 8 ounces mushrooms
• 6 ounces sliced sausage
• Anything else that seems interesting (Note: If topping with ziti, cook ziti half-way, and coat with sauce before baking.)



Bake the pizza for 11 minutes, turning the pan around in the oven half-way. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, and you’re ready to serve. Bellisimo!


If you’d like a cookbook-style, notebook-ready copy of this recipe, just send a request along with your e-mail address and you’ll have it before you can say, “Send me a cookbook-style, notebook-ready copy of this recipe.”


See you next week with an exciting (to me, anyway) dessert recipe! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Blind Baking - A Tutorial

For a story that's probably not true, it has been told many times and in many versions:
In 1966, a legendary film director was returning to Hollywood after an extended time away, and had not yet heard that the actor Ronald Reagan had announced his intention to run for governor of California. As he was getting off the plane, a reporter asked the director what he thought of  Reagan as governor. He considered it a moment before answering. "No," he said. "Jimmy Stewart as governor. Ronald Reagan as best friend."
So how exactly did I end up playing "best friend" in a video in which the star is a pie crust? Especially since my original plan for this week was to start exploring some wonderful old-school Southern cuisine from my wife's grandmother's cooking notebook? It started when, after a couple of recent posts called for blind baking a pastry crust, a number of people asked me about the right way to do that, giving me the idea that this would be a timely and appropriate subject for this week's entry. Then, while drafting that post, I started finding that many aspects of blind baking, while easy to do and show, are hard to describe. The solution: a tutorial video. Look out, Steven Spielberg! (Crass promotion alert: you'll see that some aspects of the video are aimed at You-Tube viewers not yet familiar with this site.)


I'm still very much looking forward to working with those wonderful Southern dishes in the coming weeks. For this week, "cut and mix" has been replaced by "cut and print!" So quiet on the set...ready...and, action!




That's it for now. As always (and as you just heard in the video), stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Impossible Pie Crust

I've heard it from experienced pastry chefs, and you probably have too: it's impossible to make a good reduced-fat pie crust. It's what they learned in culinary school, taught to them by people who, themselves, learned it in culinary school from people who learned it in culinary school. It's so obvious there was never a need for anyone to waste time or ingredients trying it.

Not having a real, formal culinary education, however, I confess to not having been aware of this. And so, in my ignorance, I went ahead and made a reduced-fat crust that has gotten many compliments over the years from friends to whom I've served it. (Apparently, a lot of people I know didn't go to culinary school either.)

The key to making such a crust successfully is managing the fat in the eggs and the butter. The eggs are simple enough; egg-substitutes are an easy one-for-one swap when making dough. (They don't work quite as well for batters or other things that depend on the eggs getting fluffy.) It's the proper use of butter substitute that took a while (not to mention several not-very-good pie crusts along the way) to figure out; let me share with you what I learned.

First, and as most people probably already know, butter substitutes have lower fat than butter because they have a higher moisture content, so in recipes it's not a simple one-for-one substitution. It's more like three-quarters-for-one. In other words, if a recipe calls for a cup of butter, use three-quarters cup of butter substitute.

Moisture, of course, is not the only potential obstacle to a successful crust. Texture is another. I've found some butter substitutes have the right taste but are too soft, while others have a nice firm texture but not a good enough taste. For baking I solved this by making a mix; a blend of Smart Balance and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, in equal parts, has worked well for me in baking projects. I recommend you experiment to find the combination you like best. An important factor to remember is that most brands of butter substitute are available in a variety of fat contents, some high enough to be suitable for baking, and some not. Check the package to make sure the manufacturer specifically says it's ok to use for baking. Remember, we're going for a crust that's reduced-fat, not one that's fat-free. Even I'm willing to admit that last one really is impossible.

Temperature is another key to making dough using a butter substitute. Dough, regardless of whether it's made with real butter or butter substitute, must be kept cold for easy handling. If you're using real butter, this means the refrigerator. For doughs made with butter substitute, think freezer instead. Not to freeze it solid, but to make it that much colder.


To make two 9-inch pie crusts, mix 1/2 cup of water, 1/4 tsp lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt, and put the mixture into the freezer until it's almost icy.

In the bowl of a mixer, combine 12 ounces of all-purpose flour, 4 ounces of cake flour, and 3 tablespoon of sugar. (For a real treat, use vanilla sugar instead of the plain kind. Oh baby!) Blend 8 ounces of butter substitute into the mixture using the paddle until it looks like a coarse meal with a few larger pieces of butter substitute. Add the icy water mixture and blend until the dough holds together. Divide it in half, wrap each in plastic and chill for at least 1 hour before using as you would any other pie crust.

 If you'd like a cookbook-style notebook-ready copy of this recipe, just send me an e-mail and I'll forward it to you as a Word file.


Thanks for visiting - be sure to share your comments and suggestions!

Till next week, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)