
The photos you see here are from our dinner the other night. It included vegetable pizza, a goat cheese salad, and a lightened carrot cake (the recipe for that is coming up soon, so stay tuned). The salad is our take on a salad we love from the Flatbread Pizza Company in Portland, ME, recipe coming soon. We just love Flatbread. Recently, they added a new specialty salad that I am in love with that includes roasted golden beets. Yum, yum! I will try to remember to do a write up on that next week too!
I know I’ve mentioned Tim’s fondness for pizza many, many, many times. He is in love with the stuff. Over the years I have amassed a huge number of pizza and calzone recipes. This new recipe is kind of a combo recipe. It is a vegetable pizza with little dollops of ricotta cheese and it is delicious. Pizza is nothing without a great crust, so I am going to include my favorite recipe for pizza dough at the end of this post. It’s from Todd English and I love it. I am a huge fan of anything that uses lots of vegetables and this recipe has three of my favorites – cremini mushrooms, yellow peppers, and zucchini. Pizza is good a way to get vegetables into picky eaters. Your kids or husbands won’t even notice all the vegetables in this one. Speaking of kids, pizza dough rolling is a really fun activity for them. My nieces and nephews love it when they come to visit and we make our own pizza. It’s a simple activity, but a lot of fun.
On a side note – if you make lots of pizza, then it’s worth investing in a decent pizza stone. Over the years I have invested in a couple of different stones and I have found that it’s worth getting a nice heavy stone. Some of the lighter models never heat up in time and cook unevenly. The one I’ve found that I really love is from Sur La Table and it runs around $50. I know that’s a bit more expensive then the lower end ones, but when you bake as much as I do it’s definitely worth the investment.
Now, without further ado. Roasted vegetable pizza from this month’s issue of Cooking Light, followed by Todd English’s pizza dough recipe.
Roasted Vegetable Pizza with Ricotta (From Cooking Light)
Total: 1 hour
Yield: 6 servings (serving size: 2 slices)
Ingredients
- 1 pound refrigerated fresh pizza dough
- 2 cups sliced cremini mushrooms
- 1 cup (1/4-inch-thick) slices zucchini
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 medium yellow bell pepper, sliced
- 1 medium red onion, cut into thick slices
- 5 1/2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
- 1 tablespoon yellow cornmeal
- 1/3 cup tomato sauce
- 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 1/3 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
- 2 tablespoons small fresh basil leaves
Preparation
1. Position an oven rack in the lowest setting; place a pizza stone on rack. Preheat oven to 500°.
2. Remove dough from refrigerator. Let stand, covered, for 30 minutes.
3. Combine mushrooms and next 4 ingredients (through onion) in a large bowl; drizzle with 1 1/2 tablespoons oil. Toss. Arrange vegetables on a jelly-roll pan. Bake at 500° for 15 minutes.
4. Punch dough down. Sprinkle a lightly floured baking sheet with cornmeal; roll dough out to 15-inch circle on prepared baking sheet. Brush dough with 1 teaspoon oil. Spread sauce over dough, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle 1/2 cup mozzarella over sauce; top with vegetables. Sprinkle 1/2 cup mozzarella and red pepper over zucchini mixture. Dollop with ricotta. Slide pizza onto preheated pizza stone. Bake at 500° for 11 minutes or until crust is golden. Sprinkle with basil.
And now Todd English’s pizza dough recipe. I love this one. I find it works really nicely with a mix of the new white whole wheat flour from King Arthur and all-purpose.
Figs Pizza Dough
Makes 4 eight-to-ten-inch pizzas
1/4 cup whole-wheat flour
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional flour for rolling
2 teaspoons (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons olive oil
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough-hook attachment, combine the whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, yeast, salt, and sugar. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the oil and 1 1/3 cups lukewarm water. Knead on low speed until the dough is firm and smooth, about 10 minutes.
2. Divide the dough into four balls, each about 7 1/2 ounces. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place two balls on each sheet, and cover with a damp towel. Allow the dough balls to rise in a warm spot until they have doubled in size, about 2 hours.
3. To roll out the dough, cover your fingers with flour, then place a ball on a generously floured work surface. Press down on the center of the ball with the tips of your fingers, simultaneously stretching the dough out with your hands. When the dough has doubled in width, use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough out until it is very thin. The outer border should be slightly thicker than the center. Transfer the dough on a spatula (allowing the dough to fold up almost like an umbrella) to a pizza peel or another flat, wide surface. The dough will be more oval than round. If any holes have appeared, pinch them closed. Repeat with the remaining balls.