Pizza! Pizza!

Neill and I have always wanted to test our own pizza making skills. So, once we got the hang of making sandwich bread in our bread maker we decided to venture into the world of pizza. For our first try, we attempted a roasted garlic and eggplant pizza.

The first thing we worked on was the dough. There are a million different recipes online for pizza dough, but we used a recipe that Neill developed.

In this order, add to your bread machine:

1 cup of flat beer
1/4 cup soy flour
1/3 cup ground flax seed
3/4 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup bread flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 table spoon butter
1 teaspoon of active dry yeast

Using our bread maker, it took two hours for the dough to be ready. While  obsessively checking the clock to see how much time is left patiently waiting, we busied ourselves geting the roasted garlic ready.

Cut the top of a whole head of garlic, rub the exposed raw garlic with a little olive oil, wrap the whole thing in tinfoil, and then bake it in the over at 380 degrees for about forty minutes.

Next, prepare the eggplant. Cut the eggplant however you like it best, but I tried to get slices that were about half an inch thick. Cubes might have been easier to eat, but I thought this shape would look prettier on the pizza. 

Line them up on a piece of tin-foil that is sprayed with some sort of non-stick business, brush each side with a little olive oil, and then sprinkle with salt. These go right in the oven with the garlic, but probably won't take much longer than twenty or twenty five minutes.

You'll know the eggplant are done when they are soft and have a roasted brown color. The more olive oil you put on them, the mushier they they will (and I mean that in the yummiest of ways).

Once the dough is ready, the whole pizza comes together in like 25 minutes. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle on the cheese, squeeze on the roasted garlic, and layer the eggplant. We used a mixture of mozzarella and fontina cheese, but I bet goat cheese would also be delicious on this.

Then, bake it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes, or until the cheese is melts and the crust looks golden brown. 

Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but our pizza turned out DELICIOUS. I think we were both surprised at how yummy it was, especially since it was so easy to make. I think waiting for the dough to be ready was seriously the hardest part of the recipe!

For fun, here are some other pizzas we've tried making.

  salami and cheddar cheese pizza with red sauce

 half green and black olives, half shrimp and prosciutto  pizza

pepperoni pizza

Do you have a favorite pizza place? What is your favorite kind of pizza? What is your favorite comfort food? 

xoxox

Vines On Clark

This place is an a-ok spot to to come for dinner on a friday when you are living on a graduate student budget. Their pizzas are actually pretty tasty and they make them square so the seem just a tiny bit hip. I'd particularly recommend the artichoke and goat cheese pizza. One down side is that they have premade topping combos and I'm not sure if you can switch things around or create your own. So this may not be the place to go if you just want slice of za with pepperoni. They also had 5 dollar effen black cherry vodka and 3 dollar coors.

Like I said - this place is just a ok. Big. Cavernous. Low on atmosphere. But 6 dollar pizzas? That's a winning deal. if only I hadn't spent all the money I saved and then some on cabs getting there and back . .

Bacci's Pizza

Bacci's pizza is the cream of the crop when it comes to stress eating. If you have had a bad day, drive yourself to bacci and order yourself a big old piece of whatever your vice is. Personally, I prefer the peperoni. Then, take advantage of your FREE soda. Go all out and get a REAL soda. Then, drive yourself home, change into pants with an elastic waist*, sit down in front of the tv, and then smash that piece of pizza. don't stop chewing until its all gone. If you follow these directions exactly, I promise you that all of your stress will be gone by the time you finish that slice.

*if you wore your eating pants out of the house, more power to you. you probably won't mind stuffing your face in public either.