Pizza From Scratch

Thank you, Heather for sending me this recipe from the Bread Bible! This crust was easy, fit into my day's schedule, and DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!! I'm serious. I wanted to save leftovers. This was not possible due to the level of delicious. Had to be eaten. All of it. Right away.

Anyhoo, i got up around 9 (yay for weekends with puppies who sleep through the night with no accidents!) and put together this dough (into which i added about 20% whole wheat flour and some dried herbs), leaving it out for half an hour, then popping it into the fridge. About an hour before cooking time i took it out of the fridge and stuck it on a pan that i should have greased more as i had a hard time dislodging the pizza for serving later. Every single ingredient i used was from my garden or a friend's who i made mozzarella with that morning. Not my best batch of mozz, but we were highly distracted by puppy playtime and neighborhood gossip.
For this batch of pizza i used the following toppings:

• Roasted garlic cloves
• Roasted thai eggplants with olive oil, smoked paprika and salt
• Multiplying onions
• Fresh diced tomatoes
• Fresh diced bell pepper
• Fresh diced red ripe serrano pepper
• Salt and pepper
• Pesto sauce
• Bunch genovese basil, few leaves lemon basil, pinch walnuts, pinch romano cheese, salt, generous drizzle garlic infused olive oil

I remembered that my stick blender had this handy dandy food processor attachment - worked great for this small batch of pesto without having to dig out the big food processor. I baked the crust for 5 minutes, popped a huge air bubble, slathered with pesto, topped with toppings, baked another 5 minutes and voila! Deliciosa! Paired with the very odd but cool film "Something Wicked This Way Comes" we had a most excellent Sunday night.  Once i have a more active life filled with fence building and other laborious chores we'll have to make this a Sunday tradition! For now, my mostly sedentary self will only indulge in this recipe on special occasions. I hope to increase my 'bread' repertoire more, and this was a good start to help me build my self confidence.

The bottom got nice and crispy but not burnt, the dough complimented the toppings perfectly, a little bit of spinkled cheese and salt tied it all together: groans of satisfaction filled the room.

Do you have a favorite pizza crust recipe?

"Bison Balls"

Yes, this post title was aptly named by my husband. But hey, that's what they are!
I happened  to find some relatively inexpensive bison meat at the market the other day and planned to use the second to last baggy of stored homegrown tomatoes to make some spicy bison meatballs. We've been having a bit too much pasta lately, so i'm not sure what i'll serve them over, but i'm sure it will be delicious and hopefully have some leftover for sandwiches during the week.

• 1 pound bison meat
• 1/4 cup breadcrumbs with some ground up oatmeal mixed in
  
• 1/2 cup (or more) finely diced onion 
• 3 cloves finely diced garlic
• one egg scrambled
• hot chillies to taste (add lots!)
  
• salt and pepper
• mixed dried herbs: rosemary, basil, oregano, allspice
  
• drizzle truffle oil
• 2 splashes Worcestershire sauce
  

Mix up all ingredients but the meat and egg, add the meat and mix well with your hands. Make a little reservoir and scramble up the egg (this saves dirtying another bowl) then mix the egg into the meat mixture. Form into 1 1/2 inch balls and place on a pan with space between each.

Heat oven to 400 and bake about 15 minutes, turning once until browned. I found the balls to be quite soft, so take care while turning.

Meanwhile cook down yummy tomato sauce with plenty of hot peppers and garlic added. My frozen tomatoes already had onions and basil added, I added about 1/4 cup of mixed tomato paste from last night's pita pizzas, a good splash of red wine, some garlic, and lots more salt and pepper. If i do this again, I will be adding a lot more spice to both the balls and the sauce.  The tomato was cooked down with the skins still on, so after bringing to a simmer i blended the sauce up with the immersion blender to create a nice, thick, rich sauce - watch out for splatters!.
I still don't understand why people feel the need to add olive oil to tomato sauce.

When finished, add the meatballs to the sauce and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or until your pasta or whatever else is ready. You could serve this on bread, on pasta, or as i ate it on potato. I would have preferred to serve it over a bed of sauteed kale, but my kale is lame this year. I served topped with some homemade mozzarella.

Notes:
This was delicious, don't get me wrong. I can't eat red meat, yet this was great and i did not get sick: god bless lean, antibiotic free bison! The sauce was delicious, it would have been better over pasta, but i'm trying to avoid pasta when i can (for dinner at least). The bison balls themselves were delicious, moist, firm, flavorful - i didn't notice the truffle flavor much, and they weren't nearly as spicy as i thought they'd be. Next time i will load up with a lot more spice. I also majorly missed having a green ingredient in my dinner. Not used to eating mostly meat and sauce. Tonight I will be eating nothing but green to make up for it, good thing i have lots of lettuce and spinach in the garden for the taking.