The quest for perfect homemade pizza dough–I thought–was over. Through a great recipe my sister Erica found on a food blog, I was under the impression that we had arrived. I posted the recipe here and called it a day. And then, Christmas happened . . . and I discovered that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
With all three of us girls staying at my parents’ house, spouses and children included, the burden of cooking couldn’t fall only on Mom and Dad. So just like we’ve done in family vacations past, we distributed days and each couple took a few turns at the stove. Erica and Dave announced that they were making pizza using a new recipe that Erica had discovered here, and folks, this pizza crust blew the other one far, far away. This pizza crust is hereby declared the Winner of Winners.
Erica and Dave are also declared the Winners of Winners.
The crust is chewy and bubbly and perfect. Here it is uncooked . . .
. . . and here it is after about 12 minutes on the pizza stone.
It has to be prepped the day before because it hangs out and rises for 18 hours. But don’t be intimidated by that! It rises all by its lonesome with no effort from you, and the results are so spectacular that even if it did require babysitting during its lengthy rising time, it would still be worth it.
(Speaking of babysitting, time to insert a random picture of me and Alice.)
Top that there with pepperoni if you have a pepperoni-obsessed husband like I do . . .
. . . or spread a thin layer of Boursin over the dough instead of tomato sauce, and toss on some ham and asparagus for a pizza that sends me to the moon.
I will now show you the lore of this genius who crafted the recipe. Jim Lahey, I owe you big time for sharing this with the world.
Ingredients
(Makes 6 pizzas)
7 ½ cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp salt
½ tsp active dry yeast
3 cups water
Making the dough
- Whisk together flour, salt and yeast. Stir with a wooden spoon and add 3 cups of water little by little.
- Mix dough with your hands and shape it into a rough ball. If the dough isn’t coming together, add 1 TBS of water at a time until it comes together.
- Put the ball of dough into a large clean bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 18 hours at room temperature (about 72 F) in a draft free area. The dough should double in size and form tiny bubbles on the surface during this time.
- Lightly flour your work surface and dump the dough onto it. Shape it into a rough rectangle and divide it into 6 equal portions.
- Taking the portions one at a time, gather the 4 corners towards the center, creating a ball. Let the ball rest on your work surface seam-side down, dust the top with flour, and cover with a damp towel. Let all the portions rest in this way for 1 hour. (To make ahead: you can make the dough up to this point 3 days ahead. Wrap each portion of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate. When ready to bake, unwrap the dough and let it rest at room temperature for 2-3 hours on a floured surface, covered with a damp towel.)
Making the pizzas
- When the dough has 1 hour of rest remaining, preheat a pizza stone in the oven at 450 F in the upper third of the oven. (If you’re using a baking sheet, keep the rack in the middle of the oven and don’t preheat the sheet).
- Taking the first portion of dough, lift the dough off the work surface and gently stretch it with your fingers into a 10-12’’ disk, moving the dough through your hands in a circular fashion and letting gravity help stretch it. Take care not to squash the air bubbles inside.
Here’s how I do it, gently pushing the air bubbles towards the edge of the circle:
- 3. Place the dough on a sheet of parchment paper and gently stretch it a little further. Add desired toppings. (Note: don’t load it down too heavily—light on the toppings makes for a much better pizza.
- 4. Slide the pizza still on the parchment paper onto the pizza stone or baking sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes, until dough is thoroughly baked and the cheese is bubbly. Remove from the oven, cut and serve!
- 5. Let the pizza stone reheat for a few minutes between pizzas, and repeat with remaining portions of dough.
- Guys, if pizza even remotely appeals to you, you’ve got to try this one! Seriously. Jimmy-boy done did good.
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Garlic Pork and Sweet Potato Hash
Recently I had a brief cleaning and purging frenzy, and I decided to sort through the stack of magazines in our living room and toss the majority of them. But not until I scanned them for recipes first, of course! I was driven by the fear that by blindly throwing them away, some amazing piece of culinary genius might end up in the trash instead of on my plate, and I would miss out without knowing what I was missing out on. (Is anyone else plagued by this fear when the purging of magazines is at hand?)
Anyway, weird magazine manias aside, I ended up with three recipes that I stuck on the fridge and plan on making in the weeks to come. This first one was from an issue of Better Homes and Gardens (Sept 2012), and it is incredible! There are a few separate steps–the garlic has too cook first, then be removed, the pork has to be cooked and then removed, etc–but it all happens in the same skillet, so it doesn’t create a pile of dishes.
This is some of the best pork I’ve eaten recently–tender and with perfectly balanced flavors. The sweet and salty syrup and the crunchy fried garlic are amazing together, and I can’t wait to make this again.
And what was Alice up to during all this cooking, you may ask? Well, snoozing her little head off.
There’s no better place to be in the evening than her dad’s arms. Especially after an exhausting day of cooing, fussing, napping, cooing, fussing, and napping. Oh, and contemplating the connection between her arm and her hand and the possibility of hitting that hanging toy that jingles.
And the arm bone’s connected to the . . .
. . . hand bone, and the hand bone’s connected to the . . .
. . . hanging toy bone . . .
Yep. All of that is simply exhausting. And you can’t blame her–I mean, learning that your hand is your hand? And that you can use it to reach out and touch something?
That’s huge.
Anyway, with my adjustments, here’s the recipe. And if you happen to have a sleeping baby around as you cook, it enhances the experience like you wouldn’t believe.
Ingredients
(Serves 4)
2 large sweet potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into small cubes
1 ½ lb pork tenderloin
8 cloves garlic, thinly sliced in rounds
3 TBS olive oil
2 green onions, minced
3 TBS soy sauce
3 TBS honey
3 TBS water
Salt and pepper, to taste
- Place chopped potatoes in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and cut 8 or so slits to ventilate. Microwave 8 minutes on high, stirring halfway through.
- Cut pork tenderloin into slices 1 inch thick. Butterfly the slices by cutting into them ¾ of the way (with the knife running parallel to the cutting board), opening and flattening them. Sprinkle with black pepper.
- Mix together the soy sauce, water and honey; brush the pork slices lightly with this mixture and reserve the rest.
- In a 12 inch nonstick skillet, heat the garlic and oil together over medium high heat. Cook the garlic until it is just turning a golden brown; remove and set aside.
- In the same skillet, cook the pork 2-3 minutes per side, until browned and about 160 F. Remove the pork to a platter and cover to keep warm.
- Add more oil to the skillet if necessary and let it reheat for a minute or two. When the oil is hot, add the sweet potato cubes and cook for 5-7 minutes, until brown and beginning to crisp, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
- Stir the green onions into the sweet potatoes, remove and set aside.
- In the same skillet, pour in the soy sauce/water/honey mixture and whisk over medium high heat until bubbly (just about a minute). Remove the syrup from the heat.
- Serve each plate with a pile of sweet potatoes and some slices of pork topped with the syrup and fried garlic.
Click here for printer-friendly version: Garlic Pork and Sweet Potato Hash