Last night’s pizza was extremely experimental. I decided to make the crust with 50% high gluten flour and 50% the new fresh-ground whole wheat flour from the Richardson Farm. I figured working with the new flour in that context would give me a feel for how much I need to modify my bread recipe to work with it. Pizza crust is very difficult to screw up. Even when they don’t turn out quite right, they are still edible. Maybe limp, maybe too stiff, but always edible.
It’s a good thing I decided to do that, because the new flour is WEIRD to work with, and getting it to rise is going to be a pain. Very dense, even at a 50/50 blend of flours. But, it relaxed well and rolled out very nicely, and it smelled divine! I could tell the chunks of wheat germ were cutting the gluten threads though, so my first stab at whole wheat bread will probably have to be a no-knead variety. Making anything other than pizza crust with this four is going to be tricky.
Once I got the crust rolled out and oiled, I set about putting on the sauce and goodies, except somehow I managed to leave the pantry entirely devoid of any canned tomato products. This happens sometimes when I don’t realize I have used my last can, and it doesn’t get put on the grocery list. Canned tomato products are on an aisle I only go down when I need canned tomato products, so I don’t get reminded at the store either. Ugh. What to do?
Well, I tossed a few cherry tomatoes, a handful of mushrooms, a few leaves of basil, a little garlic, and a good squirt of ketchup into my mini-blender and whizzed it together. It tasted OK, so I spread it on the crust and pressed on with tossing on the usual pizza toppings. I had no idea if it would turn out really tasty or not, but I had to have some kind of sauce on the pizza!
Amazingly, the pizza turned out really, really good. I asked Lin to be completely honest and tell me if there was anything about the pizza he didn’t like, and he declared it good. Yippee! The crust wasn’t as crispy as I like it, but it was a good solid crust that held up to the sauce and toppings without getting droopy or gooey. Also, the crust had flavor! I mean it had enough tasty flavor to it the crust could be tasted with all the other ingredients! It had a very nutty, wheaty flavor … like a Wheat Thins cracker. Quite yummy!
The experimental pizza that turned out to be more experimental than I planned (never change two aspects of a recipe at the same time – like both the crust and the sauce – things can go horribly wrong) turned out just as tasty as my usual pizzas, if not better. I think I’ll be using the new flour for pizza crust from now on and keep trying to improve its crispness.
After dinner and the dinner dishes are done, I think I’ll be mixing up a batch of no-knead bread to sit around the kitchen bubbling overnight. I’m not sure yet what ratio of the whole wheat flour I will use with the usual high gluten flour, but I want to get it pretty high so it will be extra tasty (and healthy). I hope it turns out when I bake it tomorrow, because we really need bread, which means if it doesn’t, I’ll be baking yet more bread tomorrow. I don’t really feel like baking bread all day tomorrow, though it does make the house smell nice.
And tonight for dinner? Frozen corndogs and french fries. Yes, it’s true. We don’t always eat freshly grown and chopped steamed veggies and carefully prepared cuts of free-range cows and pigs. Sometimes, I want a night off from the kitchen duties.