Pizza Dough Mastered

A couple of months ago, I made pizza dough for the first time. I struggled a bit with the dough, but I loved the idea of making my own and was determined to find a recipe that worked for me. So the search began…

The next recipe I tried was the Basic Pizza Dough from Everyday Food. This one was a total disaster and I didn’t bother to blog about it. I wish I could articulate what was wrong, but all I know is that it tasted awful. We made one pizza with it and threw out the rest of the batch. And we barely managed to make ourselves eat even that one pizza.

In response to my original pizza post, Rebekah mentioned that she used to use the basic recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I had completely forgotten that I purchased that book a couple of years ago. I dusted it off, read through the “master recipe” and decided to give it a shot. And it was a total, total winner! I love it because there is no kneading, it is really really easy, and it tastes great!!! We have made it twice already and declared this dough the keeper! You can find the recipe (with photos and links to videos) on the Artisan Bread in Five website.

Details about what I did (which will probably make more sense if you’ve read the recipe):
:: I only made a half batch each time because I didn’t have a sufficiently large lidded container to allow for rising of a whole batch. My 14-cup Rubbermaid worked fine.
:: I mixed all of the ingredients with my stand mixer and dough hook.
:: I added 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme and 1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary to my half batch. This is the variation to make herbed bread that is noted a couple of pages after the master recipe in the book. Love this as I always have dried thyme and rosemary in my cupboard and no chopping is necessary!
:: When I was ready to use the dough, I used a serrated knife to hack off the amount I needed from the container. Note that the dough is very sticky, so I sprinkled flour on the dough and my hands.
:: I plopped the dough directly onto my baking sheet (that had been sprayed with PAM). Using a roller dusted with flour, I rolled out the dough directly on the sheet. Yes, I’m aware that this isn’t the “right” way to roll dough but it works for me because I prefer mini-pizzas (in the 5″ – 6″ diameter range).
:: I pre-baked the crust alone on a regular baking sheet (with no sauce or toppings) at 450 degrees Farenheit for 3 minutes. The dough rose a little. Then I added the toppings and baked for another 12-15 minutes. Voila! Dinner was done!

Roast Chicken with Macaroni & Cheese

One weekend I decided to go with a comfort food theme, so I made Roast Chicken with Caramelized Shallots and Fontina Mac & Cheese.

To be honest, I was kind of “meh” about the roast chicken. The recipe called for four shallots. Well, I had never used shallots in such a large quantity before, and guess what I discovered? Hubby and I don’t like shallots at all! So there definitely isn’t anything wrong with the recipe itself — you just have to like shallots! The mac & cheese was absolutely delicious, but it is best consumed on the same day. The leftovers were extremely greasy after reheating, so I recommend either making a half batch or making sure you have a lot of mouths to feed!

Cashew Chicken

I was perusing my blog archives to see the different chicken recipes we’ve tried over the years, and it surprised me to find ten different chicken posts. Because until now, we had all of one repeat chicken dish in our dinner rotation — Basil Chicken in Coconut Curry Sauce. We love that one, but we make it infrequently because the prep takes us a fair amount of time. But now, we finally have our second repeatable chicken dish — Cashew Chicken from the October 2009 issue of Everyday Food.

My main issue with chicken is that I dislike the flavor of leftover chicken. There is a Chinese word that describes my interpretation of that taste, but I can’t think of an English word that fits it perfectly. “Stale” is probably the closest description, but it is not completely accurate. Hubby and I always cook in batches to last several meals, so whenever we make chicken there will be leftovers.

This Cashew Chicken dish is a winner because it is relatively quick and the leftovers still taste great to me. Instead of 1.5 pounds of chicken, we used closer to 2.6 or 2.7 pounds and doubled all of the sauce ingredients. I threw in four stalks of diced celery to add more color. The only drawback? The cashews were soggy after the first day because they had been sitting in the sauce, so we remedied that by tossing in a bit of fresh cashews after reheating our individual servings. But even the soggy cashews didn’t deter us from loving this dish!