Double Garlic, Egg and Blue Potato White Pizza

From the Vault: There are no imminent weddings that I know of coming up, but still, here is something old, borrowed and blue. Does it count if I borrowed it from myself? Plus I’ve been told that the potatoes aren’t really blue, although I’m colorblind so I don’t really care. I’m not ever going to be a bride either. Does any of this make sense? I would like to submit that it does not. I blame it on cold medicine. Whatever, time to drink tea and watch cartoons.

-herbed pizza dough
-1/4 cup olive oil
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-baby blue potato, sliced thin
-red onion, sliced thin
-shredded mozzarella and Dubliner (or whatever you like)
-eggs

Heat the oil and garlic on low in a small sauce pan for 10-15 minutes. You don’t want the garlic to brown. Roll out the dough and dock it. Brush it with just the infused oil, then top it with the cheese, potatoes, onions and bits of garlic from the oil. Bake in a very hot, preheated oven for 10 minutes then pull it out, crack the eggs onto it and get it back in the oven. Let it cook until the eggs are as done as you want, 5-10 minutes.

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You heard right, double garlic. There’s some onion on there too, so I don’t suggest making this for a date. Unless of course you’re both into garlic breath, then hey, have at it. Heh.

This was quite possibly the strangest looking pizza I’ve ever made, but I guess that’s not too surprising considering there are blue potatoes on it. The potatoes in question came in a “baby potato medley” and I didn’t feel right mashing them up like I was doing with all the others. So I decided, completely out of character, to make a pizza with them. I had some herbed dough and figured I’d make a white one, since the crust would have so much flavor already.

I don’t have a mandolin or particularly awesome knife skills, so I figured I’d slice the potato on the large slice side of my box grater.

Worked alright, even if the slices aren’t particularly pretty. Then I rolled out my dough and docked it.

For those who don’t know, docking is when you stab the dough with a fork or something of the sort to help keep air bubbles from forming. I find I get many less mutant pizzas when I do this. While the oven was preheating I had left a metal measuring cup with a quarter cup of olive oil and two cloves of minced garlic on the stove top.

See, my oven is wicked inefficient, lots of heat escapes while it’s going. Over the course of the half hour or so that I preheated the oven the oil got nicely infused. You could also just do this over the stove on a low heat, if you have a quality oven. Anyway, then I brushed on some of the garlic oil (not the chunks, just the oil).

That’s garlic number one. Then just a whisper of cheese.

Heh. I know, I know, it looks like an awful lot. And it is. That’s just how I get down sometimes. It’s a mix of mozzarella and Dubliner, the latter of which I’ve been enjoying a lot lately. Goes great with tuna salad.

Then I put on the potatoes, which had soaked for a while in salted water.

I’m told that removes starch and a little moisture, letting them brown better. I wanted some onion on there so I sliced some red onion into thin slices.

Thin enough to see though slices, even. And that was by hand, kids. Although they weren’t all that thin. Heh. Then I took some of the oily garlic chunks

and dolloped them around.

That would be double garlic.

Then I stuck it in the oven for ten minutes or so, pulled it out and cracked a couple eggs on top. None of that got photographed though, I wanted to do it as quickly as possible.

But these are the eggs,

they’re really small and really fresh. I got them from the same source as last time I got fresh eggs and they were just as awesome. I left it in for another five or ten minutes, I don’t remember exactly I’m afraid, I pulled it out when the whites were set.

And this shows you how bad my oven is. See the egg on the right?

The yolk is cooked solid. See the egg on the left?

Yeah.

Slightly less so.

This is why I don’t bake a lot of cakes in this apartment.

But solid or runny, it was awesome. The garlic crisped up and mellowed out really well, the potatoes didn’t brown much, but they softened nicely and added a good earthy flavor. I did prefer the runny egg, I love runny yolks, but both added an excellent richness. That I suppose it didn’t really need, what with all the cheese. But hey, it was most of what I was eating that day. Heh.

So who else has had eggs on pizza? What do you think of them?

Filed under: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, eggs, garlic, pizza, potato

Skillet Flatbread

Just a quickie today kids but an essential one in my kitchen.  I make this flatbread constantly and use it for any sandwich I feel like. Sometimes I call it naan, but it’s not really naan since it’s made in a skillet.

Whatever, it’s awesome. All you do is preheat a nonstick skillet over medium high heat, take a fistish sized chunk of bread dough (I use the Artisan Bread in 5 stuff), stretch it out like pizza dough and toss it in the skillet with a little butter, oil, bacon grease, whatever. Cover the pan and let it sit for ~3-4 minutes, then flip and re-cover. After a couple more minutes pull it out and that’s it. Flatbread.

Eat it with stuff you enjoy. I love it with falafel which I’ll be posting about later this week since I have a recipe for it that freezes really well and is low fat but crunchy and awesome.

Filed under: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, bread

There Should Be Pizza

Holy crap, how did I spend this long on the new blog without posting pizza? It’s practically my signature thing! Well, here is some.

This one is turkey pepperoni (surprisingly awesome, btw, I’ll share more about my opinion on that some other time), onion and bbq sauce.

It’s even homemade sauce, I’ll post about that soon too. (Update: here is the sauce) The dough is the ABin5 stuff, makes a killer pizza. Not sure why my crust didn’t brown to speak off, but whatever. The cheese did and that, in my opinion, is the most important part.

Whew, that’s better. I’ve been on WordPress over a month and I didn’t have a “pizza” category.  I did make this one in a pan, I’ve had some problems with transferring pizza from a peel to the stone. Lately I’ve been starting it in a pan and transferring it to the stone once it’s set up a bit. My clever sister told me that’s how she does it and it works just fine. So there’s a tip for you, too, this isn’t just filler, I swear! Heh.

Filed under: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, pepperoni, pizza

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day Master Recipe

From Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day

• 3 cup warm water
• 1 tbl yeast
• 1-1 1/2 tbl kosher salt*
• 6 1/2 cups a/p flour

Mix together the water, salt and yeast. Add the flour and stir to combine, you want everything moist (it’s a wet dough) but there’s no need to knead. Cover the bowl (not airtight) and let the dough rise at room temp for 2 hours. It’s ready now, but much easier to handle if you chill it for a couple hours. Store it in the fridge for up to two weeks, use it whenever you want fresh bread. Before using it, dust the dough with flour, reach in and grab a handful (however much you want). Form it into whatever shape you desire and let it rise for 40-90 minutes, the longer the rest the larger the air holes in the finished bread. It won’t rise much while resting, it does most of it’s rising in the oven. Slash the top and bake at 450 on a preheated baking stone for ~30 minutes.

*I use ~1 tbl

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Even though I already posted about this bread dough I figured I should share the recipe since it figures so heavily in my cooking these days. The link up above the recipe is to the Artisan Bread in 5 website itself which I put there not only for legal reasons but also because their instructions really are better than mine. It’s as if they’re professionals or something. Heh. Anyway, like I said before I can’t say enough good things about this method. The only time I don’t have a batch of this dough in my fridge is when I’ve run out of flour.

So, now that I have the basic recipe to link back to expect lots more bread posts around here. I’ve been on a huge naan kick lately, I make it in an anodized aluminum pan and it’s ridiculously awesome. And for a dough without oil or kneading this stuff makes killer pizza, which past readers will know my undying love for.

So yeah, bread dough. This is the recipe I use, expect to see lots more of it.

Filed under: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, bread

A Quickie About Bread

Still getting the hang of this whole WordPress thing, but I figured I’d take a minute to talk about bread. I love it. And ever since my lovely sister gave me a copy of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day I’ve been making it almost every day. It’s rather nice.

You don’t knead the dough, you don’t worry too much about rising times and you get a killer product. The weirdest part though is how wet the dough is. Here is a shot of it just mixed, doesn’t look right does it? 

But it is. And here is one after the only real rising time, two hours right after mixing.

Uhm, they are pics from two different batches, just so you know. Anyway, at this point you keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks, pull off chunks whenever you want, let them rest a bit and then bake to your heart’s content. I’m still working on shaping skills, myself.

For every loaf that looks like this:

I get five that look like this:

Fortunately they all taste wicked good. With just the master recipe I’ve made baguettes, rolls, pizza, calzones, stuffed bread, foccacia and probably other things that I don’t remember. I can’t say enough good things about it, just ask anyone who has talked to me since Christmas. Seriously, I  haven’t shut up.

Filed under: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, bread, baking, bread