French Bread Pizza

Two pieces of French bread were hollowed (I saved the bread for bread crumbs), filled with Italian sausage, salami, pepperoni, peppers, onions, spinach, and homemade ricotta.  Then, they were topped with provolone and mozzarella, and baked at 400 F. for about 12 minutes.  So simple and so good.  You could make the filling whatever you like.  Usually I don't like "pizza" with so much meat, but the combination of everything was amazing.  We topped/dipped these in marinara.  One loaf of bread made enough food for the two of us for about four days.  Next time I have a party I will serve these and cut them into 16 or 24 pieces.  Try this tonight!

Yeasted Pizza Dough

My husband and I used to make a lot of pizza.  We'd have pizza at least once a week.  We got out of it for awhile, but now the pizza making bug has struck again.  I always used to buy a crust kit like Jiffy or the Hy-vee brand.  These kits made pretty good crusts, but I knew I could make something better.  Plus, it was a little annoying that I couldn't whip up pizza anytime I wanted just because I may not have a crust kit in the house.  I decided I was going to make my own crust.  I buy bulk yeast, so I always have it in the house.  The other ingredients are just flour, olive oil, water, sugar, and salt.  These items are also staples, so I can have pizza crust anytime I want.  I used the recipe from  Vegan with a Vengeance, which is a great book whether you're a vegan or not (I would recommend any of Isa's books.  She's a genius!)  It was a little time consuming, but I know I'm making pizza next week, so I will make the dough ahead of time and freeze it.  For my first attempt the dough came out great!  I kneaded it by hand for the full 10 minutes the recipe suggests, and I now know that women who work with dough must have extremely strong forearms.  I was amazing by how soft the dough became the longer I kneaded.  I really need to invest in a pizza stone to get a consistently better crust, but this was great.  

Next week when I make this crust I will add in a little chopped garlic and some herbs and/or lemon zest during the final knead.  The pizza you see below was packed with veggies and cheeses.  It had green onions, yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, black olives, cilantro, mushrooms, mozzarella, and goat cheese.  Go make your own crust.  

Homemade Pizza

I've been meaning to post this for awhile, but I'm moving in a little over a week, and I have end of the semester grading.  I will be posting at least once a week (hopefully more), but if posts are a little sporadic don't worry, I haven't left you readers, and I will be back.  In the meantime: Pizza

This pizza turned out a lot messier than I had intended, but I still consider it to be a triumph.  I didn't make a menu plan for this week because I'm just eating what I have on hand.  I've been doing pretty good at working through my pantry, but there is still a lot of stuff left.  I wanted pizza so badly, and I strongly considered going out for it.  At the last minute I thought to look and see if I could make a pizza.  Low and behold I had a box of crust mix (I plan on making mine from scratch when I move), pizza sauce (will also make from scratch), mozzarella, and plenty of veggies, so homemade pizza it was.  This came together in less than half and hour, and was just as good as driving to pick something up.  In fact, I wish I had another slice right now.