Simply enjoy food

So, the story goes that a young American soldier came home from the war to Chicago and helped his father run a bar. His father was looking for something to feed the customers so the young man thought of the yummy Pizza he had been served in Italy. I guess he had no idea how to make it, so after some experimentation he came up with deep dish pizza.

Deep dish pizza has the cheese on the bottom and is supposed to be gooey.

Before I eliminated animal products from my diet, my deep dish pizzas were gooey. Too gooey. I believe they were authentic, it's just that I don't like that texture. It's just not satisfying.

I make this dish these days using Tofu scramble instead of cheese and it's excellent. It's cheaper and healthier, too.

I met up with my buddy Dan (whom I haven't seen in 15 years or so) and he said this is the "best "blessed" pizza" he ever had...

I make this (too) often. Here is the recipe for four pies (16 servings). This is a big batch and it freezes well.

Just cool and wrap in aluminum foil. Place it in a plastic bag and freeze. Thaw on the counter for an hour and then bake in the aluminum foil for an hour at 350 degrees. You may want to remove the foil and leave it in for another ten minutes after that.

The Dough:

I use a lean dough which means there are nothing but four ingredients in it:

6 cups all-purpose flour (Five Roses unbleached is excellent)
3 cups water
3 teaspoons (maybe a pinch less) salt
1/2 teaspoon yeast

Method:

Dissolve the yeast and salt in the water. Stir in the flour and let it sit for 20 minutes. Stretch and fold and repeat the cycle another two times over the next hour. Put in fridge overnight.

That will yield 1600 grams of dough. Use 400 grams per pizza.

The Sauce:

Two cans of San Marzano tomatoes
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup olive (or another kind) oil.

Method:

Use and hand blender to mix all the ingredients together.

The filling (in lieu of cheese):

Prepare a double batch of Tofu scramble.

To make the pies, you will also need a few teaspoons of corn meal.

Making the Pizza:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Use four 9 inch pie pans (I just realized that I use round cake pans instead of pie pans. The sides are higher and at a sharper angle). Use four sheets of parchment paper.

Cut the dough into four pieces. Use a little oil and flatten them out into a round shape. Flipping them over a few times helps shape them. Once they are about 14 inches in diameter, sprinkle them with corn meal starting from the center. Don't put too much or else the dough won't stick to the parchment paper. The corn meal is for texture and color.

Press the parchment paper on top of the dough and grab the edge of the dough through the paper. Pull it of the counter and flip it over. Use your hands to shape the dough into a circle.

Place the dough into a pie pan and center it. Press the dough into the sides of the pan so that it holds up.

Put 1/4 of the two batches of Tofu Scramble on the bottom of the pie. Add 1/4 of the tomato sauce. You may add grated garlic or any other ingredients to the sauce. For example, whole mushrooms sit nicely on top of this.

Bake all four pies for 30 minutes. If the centers are still very wet, bake for an additional 10 minutes. The crust should be dark brown and crunchy.

Remove from the pans by pulling the parchment paper up. Cool on cooling racks. The underside of the pies should be golden brown and crunchy.

I will submit this recipe to Yeastspotting at Wild Yeast Blog.

It took me a while to figure out how to make nicely shaped pizza. The secret is to cover a round ball of dough with flour and shape it with your fingers.

First, start off with some lean dough. This is a 70 per cent hydration dough made with both white and whole wheat flour.

I let them rise for a few days in the refrigerator.

Then, take a ball and drop in onto a pile of flour. Flatten it into a round disk. Press your fingers and make a nice margin of crust.

If the dough becomes sticky, dust it with more flour. Stretch out the middle of the disk with your hands. Flip it over a few times to coat the whole surface with flour. This will also prevent the pizza from sticking onto the cooking surface.

Lift the dough up and let it hang on top of both your fists. Rotate the dough around your fists and let gravity pull and stretch the edges around to make a larger disk. Put the disk down onto a piece of parchment paper and make it perfectly round with your hands. This pizza is oval shaped, but you get the idea.

Cover with pizza sauce, cheese and your favourite toppings. Bake it for five to six minutes in a preheated 550 (or higher, if possible) oven with baking stone.

Remove from the oven when the cheese is browned.

Some of the best pizza I have ever had was made in an Italian bakery, not a pizzeria. It's the kind of pizza that is heavily topped with tomato and garlic with no cheese.

The crust is firm and chewy and leaves a smooth olive oil taste in your mouth.

The dough is simply 500 grams (a generous pound) of 70 per cent hydration lean dough that has been rolled out using olive oil instead of flour. It's pressed into the baking pan and dimpled with your fingers.

The topping is made with Plum (Italian) tomatoes. The secret is to pierce them with a knife and then squeeze the heck out of them with your bare hands. Pulverizing them like this creates a heterogeneous texture of large and small pieces.

Ingredients:

One 796ml (28oz) can of Plum tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
2 cloves of freshly pressed garlic
4 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon of dried basil
1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano

Empty the can of tomatoes in a large bowl. Poke each one with a knife and squeeze the juice out of them with your hands. Leave some large and small pieces. Drain off the liquid to reduce the total volume by half.

Add the other ingredients and stir together. Let it sit for a few hours before using it. You can also take 1/2 cup of this and blend it until smooth to make excellent traditional pizza sauce.

Spread the tomato sauce over the dough and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for 30 minutes before serving.

Is bread your thing? To see other great yeasted food, visit YeastSpotting.

To those who don't know what sourdough is, it's wild yeast cultured to raise bread in the same way that commercial yeast does. To keep it alive and active, you need to discard a large portion of it and feed the remainder which makes it grow back. So, I found myself with about 200 grams of ripened sourdough starter to discard a few hours before I needed to prepare supper. Being fond of pizza, I decided to make a sourdough pizza with the otherwise wasted starter.

Having used sourdough, the crust had a lighter color, but I was still very happy with the result. Nice and open crumb with a crispy crust.

I used a 65 per cent hydration dough. My starter also happens to be 65 per cent, so the math was easy:

200g Starter
150g unbleached white flour
50g organic whole wheat flour
130 ml water
6 grams of salt

I mixed, stretched and folded and let it sit for about three hours. Then I rolled the ball of dough in a half/half mixture of white flour and wheat bran so that it wouldn't stick while I stretched it out. The wheat bran also gives the crust a nice multigrain texture. I stretched it out to a pizza shape and topped with everyone's favorites. Baked at 550 degrees for about ten minutes.