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?

Easy Roasted Garlic Recipe

Well, my my. I had no idea i hadn't already posted this. I was about to make some mayo and wanted to make this batch with some roasted garlic in the blend. I searched my blog to find the temp and time, and low and behold i had not posted this after all.
Roasted garlic is super yummy, spreadable, and adaptable. Mix it with butter, mayo or cream cheese to spruce up those condiments. Slather it onto bread straight, or mix it into just about anything for a garlicy flavor that is less "sharp" than raw garlic. It's more mellow and not as spicy. Plus the olive oil you use to roast it becomes infused with a lovely garlic essence that's great to use in salad dressings or as dipping oil.

How to:
Simply cut the papery top (opposite of root side) with a sharp knife. You want to cut the top of each little clove in the bulb, just exposing the inner flesh without cutting off a ton of the meat - maybe a half inch at the most.
You can use muffin tins lined with foil, or just make little foil packets, or nestle several bulbs in an oven-safe dish and cover with foil. Place the bulb in the foil root side down, sprinkle with any seasonings you may like (salt, cayenne, basil, etc) and drizzle well with olive oil. It doesn't need to be submerged, but oil should get into all the crannies.

Roast for about 30 minutes at 450 degrees. At about 20 minutes in the delicious smell of garlic will be intense! Be careful when you open that packet - hot steam will come rushing out (along with some delicious garlic aromas). Allow garlic to cool some as you don't want to burn yourself on that hot oil, and easily squeeze the cloves out of their paper wrappers. Store in fridge whole, or squish out the cloves and discard the paper part (lick all that good oil off first).

Ta da, that's it. Don't burn your tongue, but eat at least one clove while it's still warm: soo devine.

What's your favorite way of using roasted garlic?

More Homemade Goodness: Mayonnaise

Wowee. Who would of thought little miss fat free would be making mayonnaise from scratch?
I got the recipe out of Nourishing Traditions, and agree with the author that the olive oil is a BIT much flavorwise: think i'll mix with some sunflower oil or something else next batch. In respect to the author and her copyright i won't post the specific recipe here, but the basics that i used are:

• fresh eggs from our girls
• extra virgin olive oil, in this case it was infused with garlic as i roasted some garlic in oil yesterday (450 degrees for about half an hour in a foil packet = amazingly spreadable delicious garlic)
• fresh squeezed lemon juice from my Meyer tree
• salt
• whey

I used my husband's grandmother's old food processor and mixed it all up into a thinner than store bought, rich, bright yellow, blend of delicious mayo. It's tangy and garlicy, a little too olive oily, but i can only imagine the delicious chicken salad this is going to make!
The addition of whey promotes lactofermentation that extends the shelf life of the mayo as well as providing more enzymes and greater nutrition. Apparently mayo normally only lasts about a week or two, with the whey the life is extended to several months, in the fridge of course. I'm letting it sit out to ferment a tad, well covered, until bed time and will then stick into the fridge. I need a bigger fridge, by the way in case anyone wants to donate one,  ;)

wish i had some smaller jars. 

note to self for next shopping trip to the feed store.

Some ideas of things to do with this delicious mayo:

• chicken salad with local pecans and golden raisons
• herbed mayo with fresh dill or parsley or cilantro
• tuna salad
• some kind of party dip
• egg salad - though seems a bit redundant and cholesterol heavy with all those eggs!

 Culmination of the last few days' projects. From left to right:

steel cut oats soaking in warm water with a bit of whey, destined to be breakfast porridge (soaking grains with whey or vinegar increases their digestibility and increases enzyme and nutrition content); today's rich and delicious mayonnaise; Kim chee fermenting for a few days before going into the fridge.

What are some of your favorite homemade vs. store bought condiments you like to make or eat?