
So...what's in your pantry? Is it a cupboard? A shelf? How do you store your food and your appliances?
Now with both Justin and myself in our thirties, with corporate jobs, commutes, and a mortgage, we’re not baking bread every night. Sometimes on these hectic weeknights, we are struggling to get dinner on the table! So when I found this clever recipe that allows us to easily make both pizza dough and sticky buns from one batch of dough, I couldn’t wait to try it. Perfect for the weekend, we started on a Saturday night and made two pounds of dough.
Using only flour, water, salt and yeast and minimal kneading, this dough was pretty darn easy.
Basic Dough Recipe
(adapted from Everyday Food March 2010)
1. Measure 1 and 1/2 cups of warm water (not hot) into a bowl and add 2 packets of dry yeast (1/4 oz each). Let sit for 5 minutes until foamy.
2. Whisk 2 Tbsp sugar, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 2 tsp coarse salt into yeast mixture. Be sure to use coarse salt or a little less fine salt as the larger crystals will affect the measurement and resulting saltiness. Add 4 cups of flour and stir into a sticky dough.
3. Place in an oiled bowl and loosely cover. Let rise in a warm place for about an hour or until doubled.
4. Using a floured cutting board, turn out dough and lightly knead. Add extra flour as needed to decrease stickiness. Makes about 2 lbs.
It had one basic rise which made it even quicker. After the rise, we split it into two batches- on that went into the fridge for sticky buns the following day and one that would transform into pizza for dinner tonight.
Saturday Night Pizza
We’ve developed our own philosophy for making homemade pizza. The philosophy is this: use only ingredients that taste marvelous individually and eliminate the sauce. We’ve found that pizza sauce often make the pizza runny and soggy and overwhelms the other flavors in homemade pizza. So to make our pizza, here are the steps:
1. Roll the dough and form the crust, using polenta or cornmeal on the cookie sheet or peel to keep the dough from sticking. We usually make multiple smaller pizzas that can be shared. This way, we can experiment with the ingredients. We made 2 medium pizzas that were more than enough from this 1/2 batch which was about 1lb of dough. Remember we saved the other half or 1 lb for the sticky buns.
2. Brush with olive oil- especially the crust
3. Layer your ingredients: we often grate some mozzarella, and layer roasted red peppers, goat cheese, black olives, prosciutto, and fresh basil. Sometimes we saute spinach and onions and add those as well. If we want a touch of tomato that often comes from sauce, we use canned tomatoes that mimic that cooked tomato flavor. If fresh tomatoes are in season, we’ll use those too. This week we didn’t use any tomato.
4. Slide the pizza into your oven or on your preheated pizza stone.We baked ours at 450 degrees F and started checking at about 9 minutes, adding additional time if the dough wasn't browned.
And the result was delicious--a delightfully complex yet discreet layering of flavors that you can taste. From the fresh flavor, clean flavor of the crust to the spicy herbal basil notes to the crispy savory prosciutto. Every note was lovely and harmonious.
Sunday Sticky Buns
But don’t forget this is the dough that keeps on giving. The following Sunday morning with a generous amount of butter, brown sugar and pecans, this dough reinvented itself into sticky buns.
“Be not afraid of butter” is the mantra for this second round of homebaked goodness. The dough was rolled out into a sheet, dotted with a 1/2 cup of butter and folded into thirds on itself. Fold the top third down and the bottom third up like a letter. After chilling in the fridge for an hour, it was again slathering with more butter and sprinkled with about 1/2 cup of brown sugar and about 3/4 cup of chopped pecans.
Rolled into a jelly roll and sliced, the 12-13 rolls went into a greased pan and baked at 350 degrees F for about 30-40 minutes.
Once turned out, the caramelized sugars on the now top of the buns, glistened and beckoned, “Eat me.” A word of advice, restraint is key was the molten butter and sugar will surely burn your mouth and taste much better when it isn’t piping hot! But don’t wait too long--these rolls have a short plate life and should be eaten warm.
And that was our decadent but rather easy weekend of baked bread. We highly recommend it.
I took this mobile photo of the three different trash bins: trash, compost and recycling, in San Francisco along with the sample boards of what “trash” goes where. When we moved back to California, I confess that it took some time for me to learn what things go where.
This week, we found out that we can now put food scraps and other compostables like soiled paper towels in our green bin along with yard clippings. This is huge for us, Bay Area suburbanites, as now the majority of our “trash” can be composted or recycled. In fact, we bought compostable bag liners for our “trash compactor” (came with the house). It has been quite eye-opening to analyze our trash and see what we are throwing away.
So…
What makes up most of your "trash"?
Well, Justin and I have been traveling quite a bit lately- practically every other week this month! This week, I was lucky enough to use an upgrade into first class on United. This was my lunch:
• a grilled chicken salad with edamame and yellow and red bell peppers over a bed of romaine lettuce with sesame dressing and a warm whole wheat roll.
• and for dessert, a warm chocolate chip cookie. It was actually all quite good.
I’ve also been eating the “for purchase” spinach salad with gorgonzola, walnuts and dried cranberries when I sit in economy (which is 95% of the time). It is a much fresher offering over the snack box choices and I have been very pleased with these new options. I find the United fruit, nut and cheese plate to be a pleasing and hearty snack.
So, we'd like to know: