I’m Unemployed; Let’s have pizza

I’ve had a craving lately for my homemade pizza, but I didn’t have the opportunity to make it until this Thursday. It’s not normally much of a weeknight meal, due to the 2 hour rising time required for the dough (seeing as how I typically get home from work at 8 pm or later, that really doesn’t work). But, as of Wednesday of this week I am blissfully unemployed (until Monday, that is). So, I finally had the opportunity to make pizza on a weeknight.

Hours before Jim was due to arrive home from work, I began the dough. I first made this dough on Christmas, when I prepared a Pissaladiere as an appetizer to our Christmas meal (this is a French Provencal “pizza” covered with caramelized onions, olives, thyme and anchovies). The dough was tasty and easy to work with, and I thought it would make a fine dough for a slightly more mainstream pizza. This dough was made entirely with white flour, however, which just won’t do. So I swapped out ¾ of the bread flour with whole-wheat flour to make a whole-wheat crust. Those results were good; the crust was still easy to work with and baked up well, but now had the wonderful hearty flavor of whole wheat. Then, I had the idea to add quinoa flour to the crust. If you haven’t had quinoa, try it. It’s actually not a grain (it’s the seed of a grassy plant), but it behaves much like one for cooking purposes (so it’s most often referred to as a grain). It has a great, nutty flavor; really unlike anything else. It’s probably my favorite “grain” to use in cooking, because of its short cooking time and great taste. It also has a great nutritional profile; it’s naturally fairly low in fat, high in protein (it’s either a complete protein or really close; unusual for a grain) and high in fiber. I had a sack of quinoa flour in the house, which I had bought with the intent of adding it to baked goods here and there. Why not start now?

The flour blend for the quinoa pizza dough consists of ½ c bread flour (this is a non-whole wheat product), 1 cup of stone ground whole-wheat flour and ½ cup of quinoa flour. Quinoa flour is a gluten free product, so you can’t go too hog-wild in substituting it for other flours without changing the nature of your baked good. From the research I did, it seemed that the consensus was that you could substitute up to half of your regular flour with quinoa flour. Being painfully risk averse, I went for the ¼ substitution instead.

I placed the flours in the work bowl of my food processor, which I fitted with the dough blade (it has shorter arms and is more blunt than the regular chopping blade). I added 1 ½ t of rapid rise yeast, about 1 t of salt and ½ t of sugar. I pulsed the machine to blend. I added about 1 T of flaxseed meal (which is a replacement for fats in cooking, rather than flours—this surprised me, since it has the appearance of a flour-like product) and a scant 2 t of olive oil. With the machine still running, I slowly poured in about 1 c of warm water (about 110 degrees). I poured in the water until the dough formed a ball and spun around the outside of the work bowl. I then turned the dough out onto a floured cutting board and kneaded it for a couple of minutes. I kneaded this dough longer than I would have for a non-quinoa dough, because of the missing gluten in the quinoa flour. As I understand it, kneading dough spurs the formation of gluten, which is what gives baked goods their structure. It would seem that a dough partially comprised of a gluten-free flour would have a disadvantage for gluten formation, so maybe a little extra kneading would help the process. Besides that, it’s fun.

I formed the dough into a ball and placed it in a 4-cup glass measuring cup that I had sprayed with olive oil (using my handy olive oil sprayer—now that was a great purchase). The use of the glass measuring cup was a tip that I picked up from Cook’s Illustrated magazine. Since yeasted dough recipes usually will tell you let something rise until something has “doubled in volume”, a measuring cup with clear markings will help you to judge when the sufficient rise has occurred. I covered it loosely with plastic wrap, and continued my chores elsewhere in the house while the yeast did its work. It was nice and warm in the house that day (it was freakishly warm outside, having reached nearly 70 degrees), so I didn’t need to make any special arrangements to provide a warm spot for the rise (sometimes I’ll turn the oven on a low setting and set the bowl on the stovetop to ensure a warm enough environment for the yeast to grow).

To celebrate my newfound freedom from employment, we had gone out the night before with friends to a beer bar/restaurant that serves brick oven pizzas. One of the pizzas that we shared was a lobster pizza. It was so good; I can hardly describe (although they’re pretty cheap with the lobster—what do you expect, though?). We have no lobster at home, but we do have lots of crab (from the Giant food crab sale last week)…

I typically split the pizza dough into 2 smaller pizzas (they probably end up being 10-12 inches), each with different toppings. So I planned to make one of the pizzas will be a crabmeat pizza, with a little Fontina cheese and some fresh tarragon (the pizza at the restaurant had fresh tarragon on it; tarragon is one of my favorite herbs and it was a stand-out on the pizza). The other would be topped with an assortment of vegetables, fresh basil, goat cheese and freshly grated parmesan.

I set out to Whole Foods to grab a couple of last minute ingredients for dinner. One of the items on the list was the fresh tarragon that I craved so badly. Guess what…no tarragon. Great. They did, however, have Chervil (which is interesting, because when I want Chervil, I can almost never find it). Chervil is a far more muted than tarragon, but it does have a flavor slightly reminiscent of tarragon—a slight anise touch. So, I decided that I would sprinkle some dried tarragon on the pizza and use fresh Chervil as well. I picked up the remaining items for dinner (including a couple of craft beers, which I got carded for—yet again) and headed home.

One of the toppings for the pizza was to be caramelized onions. These are so easy to make, but they do take a little time (but very little attention—you can just let them cook away and wander back every-so-often to give them a little stir). Take a sweet yellow onion, halve and peel it. Cut off the root-end and cut the onion into long slices. Heat a little oil in a non-stick fry pan (medium to medium-high heat; we don’t want them to cook too fast). Add the onions and allow them to soften. When they start to turn a little translucent, add a bit of water and a sprinkle of sugar. And just let them continue to stew away, stirring here-and-there and adding additional water as needed. In about a half-hour, you’ll have soft and sweet onions.

The two pizzas are pictured below, ready to be cut and consumed. Yes, they are very "rustic"; that's how we like them. The veggie pizza was adorned with steamed broccoli, portobello mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, chopped tomatoes, basil, red bell peppers, caramelized onions, goat cheese and parmesan. The crab pizza had fontina cheese, caramelized onions, portobello mushrooms, dried tarragon and fresh chervil. Oh yeah, and crab; lots of it. You’ll probably notice that the pizzas are not soaking in cheese; that’s the health-conscious part of me rearing it’s ugly (but fit) head. Not being a total nut, I provided Jim with a generous amount of extra cheese that he could add to his slices.

Strange how everything tastes better when you don’t have to go to work the next day…here’s to a long weekend of long-awaited freedom (and a plunge into the unknown come Monday).