Weeknight Meal: Pizza and Imperfection

I know that isn't pizza up above (smart readers, you!). But you've seen me make pizza before.

If you're going to cook at home more often (which we're trying to do), it takes planning and preparation. I am great at planning. I have four to-do lists going at all times, and our meal plan is on the fridge right next to the shopping list. I am terrible at preparation though.

• We were supposed to eat pizza for dinner one night this week. We already had pizza dough in our freezer (preparation success!).

• But I forgot to take it out to thaw in the morning (preparation failure!).

• I remembered in time to email Dewey to ask him to take it out (preparation success!).

• I did not remember to tell him exactly how to take it out of the freezer (preparation failure!).

So Dewey didn't remove one of the pizza dough balls from the plastic package, place it in a bowl, drizzle it with oil, and return the other dough ball to the freezer for another night. Instead he plunked the entire package down on the table to defrost, which is a perfectly ordinary thing to do.

When I got home from work at night, there was a bit of a crust on the dough balls because they weren't oiled. And they were still pretty cold from being in the plastic packaging. And there were two of them.

But I figured it would work out OK, and it did. This wasn't the best pizza we've ever made, but it certainly wasn't the worst. It was pretty good. That might be the third skill it takes to eat more meals at home, accepting imperfection.

I let the balls rise a bit more in a slightly heated oven, and then set out to making pizza. For us, one dough ball makes two personal sized pizzas. This has the advantage of letting us choose our own toppings so we can both be selfish and eat things the other one doesn't like. It's also much easier to work with 6-inch pizzas than 9- or 10-inch pizzas.

After dinner, we were still left with a dough ball, which I didn't think I should return to the freezer. So I tried my hand at making calzones, using some leftover steamed broccoli for the filling. I still need a bit of work on my shaping, but now we have leftovers for lunches or quick dinners this week. Preparation success!

Success!

I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions. Big sweeping changes are pretty rare and are usually motivated by something life changing. A life-threatening illness. The birth of a child. The loss of a family member. But, I do like to start the year off by taking stock and making a few, very concrete, goals.

In 2009, one of my goals was to get more comfortable with yeast. Yeast has always intimidated me. A lot of the steps are pretty subjective. (What does it mean that dough is "smooth and pliable"?) In 2009, I made bagels, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, and lots and lots of pizza. Besides some mishaps with pizza baking at the beginning, it all went pretty well. I can easily whip up some pizza for dinner or a batch of cinnamon rolls. But at the end of the year, I felt like I had cheated because I never made a good old fashioned loaf of bread. So one of my goals for 2010 was bread.

Above is a loaf of white sandwich bread from a recipe on the King Arthur Flour blog. Those folk know their bread



I'm pretty happy with my first loaf. It's incredibly soft and pliant. I can't wait until tomorrow to make some toast and spread it with melty peanut butter.

I'm hoping 2010 will find me eating homemade challah, whole grains breads, and some of the more unusual breads from 500 Vegan Recipes, like Mole Bread, a spicy cocoa bread.

Use It Up Cinnamon Rolls

I had about half a can of pumpkin puree leftover from making pumpkin muffins last week. After digging through my recipe collection, I came across this pumpkin cinnamon roll recipe. It fits in with my goals of not wasting food and mastering cooking with yeast, if not my goal of eating better.

The recipe uses 3/4 cup of pumpkin which is perfect. A can of pumpkin puree has about 1 3/4 cup of pumpkin. Most recipes use 1 cup of pumpkin, so this is the perfect recipe for using up the leftovers.

The recipe is from the cookzine Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk, issue number 2. I've tried several recipes from both issues, and they've all been great. Both issues can be purchased from Herbivore Clothing.

Pizza

Turns out the second yeasted thing I made wasn't foccacia or challah but pizza. Dewey and I have been making our pizzas using dough balls from Whole Foods up until now. I think we'll be making all of our own pizza crusts from now on because this was one of the best pizzas I've ever had.

The crust recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance as is the pizza sauce. The pizza dough recipe made enough dough for four 6- or 7-inch pizzas, so we froze half of it for another time. Making your own pizza sauce is incredibly easy, especially if you don't mind chunks of tomato or have an immersion blender. (We blend ours. Tomato chunks are on Dewey's avoid-list.)

We each topped our own pizzas. I took this separate-but-equal food opportunity to eat lots of things Dewey won't touch. I topped my pizza with a thinly-sliced heirloom tomato, black olives, artichoke hearts, and pesto. Basil is the one thing I'm growing successfully in my garden.

Bagels!

Recently, my grandmother bought Dewey and me a stand mixer (thanks Barbie!). One of my goals this year is to get more comfortable working with yeast. I've made bagels and pretzels a few times before, but I'm not very confident doing it. So Dewey and I knew exactly what we wanted to make first with the stand mixer's dough hook.



These are some bagels we made earlier this year with the recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. This is the first time that cookbook has let me down. The instructions were both too complicated and not detailed enough. They suggested spritzing the oven with water to create steam, but failed to mention that the
water mixed with the yeast should be warm. They turned out too tough and unusually brown.



But with our new mixer in hand, we tried the recipe from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. And this recipe turned out perfect for us. Crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. And they're nicely browned (but not brown), too. Just perfect.

And this recipe has fewer steps as well. Only one rise instead of two. No fussy water in the oven. And Isa's instructions for shaping the bagels worked out much better for us.

Now I'm excited to try more yeast recipes. I think focaccia is next on my list.