Post Race Pizza

Here is our PILE of soaking wet clothes from after the (awesome but ridiculously wet and cold) race yesterday. 

Nothing felt better than a long hot shower.

Then it was pizza time!  I had an itch to make homemade pizza dough Saturday night, and decided we’d eat it Sunday.  I first went off this recipe from Good Things Catered. 

I used her ingredient list, only substituting 1.5 cups White Whole Wheat Flour + .5 cups APF, instead of all APF. 

Then I referenced this recipe from 101 cookbooks.  Since they were very similar recipes, I opted to use this recipe for it’s technique because I really just wanted to use my mixer and it’s dough hook :)

(Don’t worry I changed it to the dough hook)

Action shot:

Dough ball!  This literally took 5min, why don’t I do this more often?
In fact I made another batch today so we could have leftovers. 

    

Both of these recipes used instant yeast.  The difference between instant and regular is that the instant doesn’t need to be proofed first, you just add it in with the dry ingredients. 

Well I found that it didn't really dissolve all the way, when I                 went to roll it out you could see little particles of yeast in the dough???  Anyone know what's up with that?  It still tasted good at least. 

Also didn’t rise much (probably because the yeast didn’t dissolve all the way…oh well, this is how we learn :)

I was inviting my mom (and Willow) over for pizza night as well.

Cleaned and set up the table.  New runner I got on sale from Pottery Barn:) 

Fresh Tulips (another whole foods purchase from Saturday:)

First was  a trial pizza, when I was still unsure about the dough.

And maybe I’m the last one to realize this but, PARCHMENT PAPER IS INCREDIBLE FOR PIZZA STONES!!!!  I’ve ALWAYS had issues getting the pizza onto the hot pizza stone…just make the pizza on parchment and slide the pizza + parchment right onto the stone.  Genius. 

#1 - Sauce+cheese+pepperoni+onions+peppers.  Mmmmm.

#2 – Buffalo Chicken Pizza!

We broiled some chicken tenders earlier with Frank’s Red Hot and a little olive oil. 

Sauce+cheese+Red Hot+chicken+shredded carrots

SO GOOD!  This was served with light Blue Cheese dressing on the side.

#3 – Hawaiian. 

Yay for having Ham and Pineapple in the house.

#4  -  was a trio of all three flavors. (pre-baking)

Mom brought a salad, and dessert.

My plate.

The pizza’s were small and very thin.  I cut about 6 sliced in each.  I had about 4 of these small slices + salad.

Dessert was homemade black bottom pie!! 

She even whipped up some fresh whipped cream here.  We shaved some chocolate on top as well.

Incredible.  Thin rich chocolaty layer on the bottom, a custardy middle that had a hint of rum, and whipped cream on top.

Willow ventured under a chair for a while :) 

Found you!

Anyone have any thoughts/preferences/issues with instant yeast vs. regular Active yeast??