home made Pizza
Instead of grabbing the phone to order pizza for dinner, head to the
kitchen and let a pizza crust become your canvas.
List of Ingredients
Minimize preparation by buying shredded cheeses, premade sauces from
basic tomato to salsa and pesto, sliced pepperoni or precooked
chicken. Keep in mind that pizza can be more than tomato sauce topped
with sausage and pepperoni, onions and mushrooms.
Add these ideas from the American Institute for Cancer Research or
one of the recipes listed to your pizza repertoire:
Recipe
--Use roasted red, green and yellow peppers along with red onion
slices to create a boldly flavored, eye-catching pizza.
--Try a mushroom pizza that includes shiitake, portobello and oyster varieties.
--Chunks of eggplant and onions cooked with garlic and ginger bring
an Asian flavor to a pizza crust with low-fat black bean sauce
sprinkled with cilantro.
--Make a Mexican pizza with black, kidney or pinto beans. Brown the
pizza crust and spread it with a spicy tomato sauce or chunky salsa.
Top with beans, grated cheese and chopped cilantro.
--Create a Tuscan pizza using bite-size pieces of cooked chicken
breast, finely chopped green onions, roasted red peppers and small
amounts of grated Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
Or experiment by substituting a few of these ingredients.
--Crust: English muffins, pita bread, bagels, French or Italian
bread, focaccia, Italian bread shells such as Boboli, tortillas, rice
cakes, crescent rolls, puff pastry.
--Sauce: Roasted garlic sauce (see recipe), black bean sauce (recipe
follows), salsa, Dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar, pesto, taco
sauce, Alfredo sauce.
--Toppings: Cheese, of course, your choice, but instead of mozzarella
or Parmesan, consider gorgonzola, feta, brie or gouda; seafood such
as shrimp, scallops, clams; nuts; vegetables, all types, raw, roasted
or grilled (eggplant, squash, broccoli, cauliflower, greens or
spinach, zucchini or hot chilies); pepperoncini; artichoke hearts;
canned beans; sun-dried tomatoes; fruit such as pears, apples and
kiwi; capers; country ham; salami, prosciutto or other cold cuts;
fresh tomatoes and basil.
Some say the crust is the pizza, and for those who enjoy preparing
their own crust, the Speedy Dough recipe that follows that will
reduce preparation time.
Here are a few more tips to maximize your pizza's potential (from
''The Pizza Gourmet'' (Avery Publishing, $14.95) and Parents
magazine):
--Preheat oven for at least 20 to 30 minutes. It needs to be good and
hot when the pizza goes in.
--When brushing olive oil onto the crust, wet a pastry brush with
water first to keep the bristles from absorbing the oil.
--Prick dough all over so it doesn't puff up too much.
--Because the center of the pizza takes the longest to cook, place
the thickest layer of toppings toward the edges.
--When the first topping on the crust or dough is sauce, have
remaining ingredients on hand, so the pizza can be assembled quickly
to avoid a soggy crust.
--The closest alternative to baking pizza in a wood-fired oven is
baking it on a pizza stone or unglazed quarry tiles in a conventional
oven. When baking pizza on stones or tiles, you'll need a pizza
paddle on which to form the pizza and to transfer it to the stone in
the oven.
--Whether you use pizza pans, stones or tiles, bake pizzas on the
lowest part of the oven to prevent crusts from becoming soggy.
--For the crispiest crust, bake pizza directly on oven rack for final
8 to 10 minutes.
For those who argue that no matter what you put them on, the toppings
are what make the pizza, we offer several recipes to be served on
prepared crusts.
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