Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Hurt Finger PIzza

Several of you know that last week, while trying to make pizza from scratch, I cut my finger badly on the blade of my mandolin slicer. I decided that I wanted to make pizza again and this time I was unwilling to wait for it to rise.  Besides I have been trying to find fool proof recipe for flat bread pizza so I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment.  I looked through various cookbooks to find a flat bread without yeast and found one that just had flour, salt, and water.  Since my finger is still in the bandage, not to mention sensitive to touching things, I was somewhat unable knead the dough.  What to do?  Ah, the Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook to the rescue!  The resulting dough was very sticky but it seemed to work out pretty well.

I cooked the toppings for the pizza because I didn't want too much moisture from the tomatoes on the crust.  Besides, I have read that cooking tomatoes reduced the natural acids in them and helps with digestion.  I also don't like raw-ish veggies on pizza.  I sliced up one plum tomato and one regular tomato because that's what I had, one yellow onion, diced one large clove of garlic, and segmented one slice of roasted red pepper and cooked them in a little oil until the onion was translucent and then spooned it out onto the crust. I added some fresh basil leaves and slices of fresh mozzarella to the top.  You can use anything you want for the toppings.  I usually use what I have left over in the fridge.

Anyway, here is the recipe for the crust:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup water
olive oil

Preheat the oven to 420 degrees.

Put all the ingredients into the mixer and fit it with the dough hook.  Mix until the dough is coming away from the bowl.  You may need to add a little more flour.

Coat a pizza stone with olive oil and also two rubber scrapers.  Turn the dough out from the bowl onto the stone and spread it to a thin circle leaving at least 1/2 inch of a boarder on the stone.  You may need to put more oil on the scrapers as the dough is very sticky.

Bake for about 20 minutes until the flat bread is somewhat brown on the edges.  Remove the stone with the dough and add your pizza toppings and put back in until the cheese is melted and slightly browned.  Let cool after removing for about 5 minutes before cutting.



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