My week of cooking from the herb garden came to an end tonight with Pesto Pizza. I varied from my standard Bread Machine Pizza Dough into a whole wheat cornmeal dough using 3 cups whole wheat flour and 1.5 cups cornmeal. Coming out of the machine, I feared an experiment gone wrong. The dough was very wet and grainy; I started working the dough on the counter with some all purpose flour and it seemed like all might not be lost. It was wet, but it handled well.

Since the dough was easy to work with, I started to stretch it into a circle and roll it out with my french pin. I rolled up the edges and had a pretty decent crust. Then I tried to move it to the peel. Bad move. It broke in a couple of places, and as I tried to seal them on the peel I just ended up moving the break across the crust. Finally, I took some crust from the edges and patched up the last holes so I could spread on the Herb Garden Pesto made with freshly picked basil. There was just enough to cover the crust.

After covering the dough with a batch of Pizza Cheese Blend I slid it onto the prepared stone in the oven. On pizza night, I love my oven. I was able to heat it to about 625° and cook the pizza for about 7 minutes. With the cornmeal, the crust didn't rise the way it does when it's just a flour based dough. This was the first time we had thin crust pizza (except the one time I left the yeast out).

Based on what I've read about cornmeal crush, I expected something much crisper. The percentage of flour to cornmeal I chose was based on googling "cornmeal pizza dough" and searching Epicurious for the same phrase. I'm not sure if the issue was the use of the whole wheat flour, if I should have adjusted the ratio, or if the amount of water isn't right for adding the cornmeal. Time for further study.

9:30:10 PM    trackback []  

New York Times review of Food, Inc.: "The United States Department of Agriculture still lacks a decent system of assessing risks from genetic modification; so far, we've just been lucky."

3:39:30 PM    trackback []  

Liquor license denied: "Charbonneau and Lawrence Lathe opened Keep It Simple two years ago to give recovering alcoholics, gambling or drug addicts a bar-like atmosphere without the booze they have to shun." Apparently, it is not acceptable to have a liquor license in Edmonton unless you intend to sell liquor. Via Instapundit.com.

12:20:37 PM    trackback []