Wednesday, August 20, 2008

What's for Supper: Homemade Pizza

Supper tonight will be a pizza of sweet peppers and sweet onions, thinly sliced fresh tomatoes, herbs, and cheeses, on a crust made with lots of black pepper. My favorite crust recipe comes from Evelyne Slomon's The Pizza Book, based on her Black Pepper-Lard Dough, only I don't cook with lard, so I use olive oil instead. It's delicious and easy, and kneading dough is good therapy.

Here is the recipe as I make it:

1 c. warm tap water
1 package active dry yeast
3 to 3-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon (or more) coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 c. olive oil


1. Pour the water into a medium sized mixing bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Stir it till it dissolves.
2. Add 1 cup of the flour, the salt, pepper and olive oil, and mix thoroughly. Add a second cup of flour and mix again.
3. Turn the dough out onto your bread board on top of another cup of flour and knead it till it's smooth and elastic. Use the extra half cup of flour if you need it.
4. Put the ball of dough back in the bowl, cover it with a cloth, and set it on the back porch table to rise. Kick the cats off the porch so they don't "help."

Yield: One 14-inch (or so) pizza crust. Double it to make pizza for the family.

2 comments:

Iain said...

Mmmmmm - sounds good. I like the idea of adding pepper directly to the dough. Will give that a try next.

We did a whole wheat pizza crust on the weekend - I like that site's recipes generally, but next time I will definitely add the pepper.

Thanks for the tip.

Anonymous said...

Mmm, that sound slike the perfect thing to make tomorrow, while i am home to watch the dough!