My life of leisure has led me to some amazing culinary adventures at home. I poured a lot of my energy into tackling intimidating recipes. All the creative juices I used for crafting succinct ledes and teases inside the newsroom are now being used to build up tempting flavors and aromas inside my Cow Town kitchen.
So now – I’d like to introduce you to my first pizza.
My freelance video shoot for James David Cellars inspired me to tackle this NY/Chicago/Italian foodie icon. David Cole showed me how easy it was to pile on the toppings and bake it on a pizza stone.
Super Bowl: Making Pizza from Kris Vera-Phillips on Vimeo.
Back in Cow Town, my hubby and I spent about $10 on the stone and another $10 on the ingredients.
Nobody said my life of leisure had to be a pricey one.
One important factor in making your own pizza pies: time. The dough had to rest overnight in the fridge. Once out of the fridge, it needed two more hours to rest and come up to room temperature. We made the dough based on a recipe from 101 Cookbooks.
The same blog gave me the recipe for the marinara sauce. Mark thought I went a little heavy on the red pepper.
He also had better luck on tossing the dough. We each took care of our own pies. I was worried about stretching the dough too thin and having it bake unevenly. So I was conservative on pie tossing. In fact, I think mine made it about a couple inches into the air before I rescued it from gravity. As you can see, Mark had no problem tapping into his pie tossing tendencies.
First, I added the marinara sauce to the pie. Following David Cole’s example – I held back on overloading the pie with toppings and sauce. Next, I added the pepperoni from Boar’s Head. I topped all that with three slices of mozzarella. Finally, I drizzled some olive oil on top.
We slid it onto the pizza stone and baked it for about 6 minutes. The results: hot, crispy crust with a dough center. Each bite was filled with meat, cheese and pizza doughy goodness.
This was a fun and satisfying foodie experience inside our humble Cow Town kitchen.