Friday, August 11, 2006

Pizza

Eggplant, tomatoes, basil, all from the garden. Sounds like pizza time !

First, the dough gets made and kneaded and allowed to rise. I do this the night before and it rises in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning it comes out to warm up and rise some more. In this photo, I've divided the dough into two rounds for the final rising.

Next, the eggplant is sliced, blanched, then roasted with a bit of olive oil in the oven. While that's happening, the tomatoes get sliced and lightly salted.

Then it's outside to pick some fresh basil which gets washed and chopped. The other ingredients are assembled:

Grated mozzarella, chopped ham, minced garlic, along with the tomates and basil. Not shown: salt & pepper and olive oil. I roll out one of the dough balls and let it rise while the oven and pizza stone heat up. The semolina gets sprinkled on the pizza peel (this helps it slide off into the oven), the dough goes on the peel, then it's on with the toppings, a dash of olive oil, and into the oven!

Two of these for lunch - delicious! Served, of course, with a local gamay.

2 comments:

  1. Susan,
    Yes, there's mozarella. It's in the photo of the assembled ingredients. I put it on the bottom of the pizza so that it melts and the other toppings kind of melt into it. Sometimes if I put it on top, it browns and the other toppings don't get cooked.

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  2. We do both (cheese on bottom and on top) depending on the other ingredients and the cheese. It's good both ways! We always pre-cook eggplant since it's not in the oven long enough to cook.

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