Back in the kitchen

Since having a baby, I must say, that I'm constantly leaning towards easy meals - you know, the frozen kind.  Fortunately, my "foodie" husband insisted on selecting a couple recipes from old Cooks Illustrated magazines.  So one night last week, before he had to go back to work, we decided to make Pizza Margherita.  The article clearly stated that you must have a pizza stone and a pizza peel (one of those things you use to get the pizza in and out of the oven) in order to make the recipe.  Well, we had one out of two, so we said, "What the hell?" and got down to business.

First we made the dough for the pizza crust.  Combining unbleached all-purpose flour, cake flour, salt and sugar in a food processor, we pulsed the mixture for about 5 seconds.  Then we added almost 2 cups of warm water that was mixed with rapid rise yeast.  This almost immediately turned into a huge ball of dough rolling around the food processor - exactly what we wanted.  Next, we split the dough into two balls and placed them on a floured cookie sheet.  These had to rest for an hour (or double in size).

While the dough was doing its thing, Iwepoured a can of diced tomatoes into the food processor and crushed them with two or three 1-second pulses.  Then we placed the contents in a fine-mesh strainer to drain for at least 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, we chopped fresh basil and fresh mozzarella.  Once the 30 minutes was over, we combined the tomatoes with 1 small, minced garlic clove, a pinch of table salt, a teaspoon of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of basil.

Once the dough doubled in size, we shaped the pizza crust.  This was much more difficult than the pictures made it look:)  The key to a great Pizza Margherita (or so I'm told) is a super thin, crispy crust.  Easier said than done my friends.  Regardless, we created the crusts and spread a thin layer of the tomato topping on them.  Now here's where it got interesting.  Remember that pizza peel we were supposed to have?  Well, picture this - (Jason's on the phone at this point, so it was me flying solo) I'm trying to transfer the pizza crust covered in tomato sauce using not two, but three spatulas onto a 500-degree pizza stone!  Not happening.  So what was the fix?  I folded the pizza in half, moved it, and merely unfolded it on the stone (very carefully!).

Now the crusts and sauce baked for 5 minutes, we took them out, added the mozzarella cheese and baked them for another 5 minutes.  The final touches were to sprinkle basil and olive oil on top.  Not a super thin, crispy crust we had hoped for, but they were absolutely delicious and something I'd like to try again....with all the required tools!

Oh, and during this process, our pizza stone cracked into 3 pieces!  Something I didn't know was even possible, so I suppose we'll be needing a new one of those!