There is something so special about pizza as a dinner. Our normal scene is to order a pizza on a Sunday night after we cook pretty much every other day of the week. Now, to be clear, we make seriously delicious food, and have made pizza in the past, but our usual go to is to order out for a pizza. Nothing like an easy Sunday night meal to wrap up the weekend. Even though I have made pizza in the past, the one I made was the clam pizza inspired by the pie at Tom Douglas’s restaurant Serious Pie. I once met a chef who worked there and she gave me the basic recipe. Even though we made a serviceable version of it, the way we did, was that I purchased raw pizza dough from a local pizza place (by bribing the person behind the counter). I had attempted to make pizza dough and just never really spent much time developing my pizza dough skills.
We got sucked into our Pizza Quest by watching the Netflix show Chef’s Table: PIzza. Being that I fancy myself as a chef, I set about trying to prefect a pizza dough. I had previously made an effort to make a great pizza dough in order to make the Serious Pie Clam PIzza that we enjoy so much. When I saw the show on Netflix, I went into overdrive and in the end, made the decision to acquire the artisanal flour from Hayden Flour MIlls, where they are reviving forgotten native grains from the ground up in the Arizona desert. They use a stone milling technique to process the flour. Stone milling is an old world process where the whole grain is crushed into flour by rotating stones. Unlike modern roller mills that tend to shave off and discard the flavor and replacing natural nutrients with chemical enrichments, their process of stone milling in small batches preserves the natural oils of the grain, creating a more flavorful, nutrient-dense product. While it’s hard, labor-intensive work, they believe it’s well worth it. And so do I!
Making pizza dough with the highest quality, natural, hand-cultivated flours that are never bleached or enriched, and always freshly milled quite literally changes the experience.
With the dough perfected, we then set about creating and recreating pizza’s that we love.
Working with the dough and figuring out a process to make the pie, get it onto our heated pizza stone and have it keep its shape was an interesting challenge. But we figured that out.
Next came the topping choices. At first I was making slightly smaller pies so we would make two pies on Saturday night and 2 pies on Sunday night, which means toppings for 4 pizzas. That seemed unworkable, so instead we are now making 2 slightly larger pies, one each for Saturday and Sunday.
This is our Clam Pizza cooking in the oven. Its a wonderful pie conceived by Seattle chef, Tom Douglas and is served at his restaurant Serious Pie. I love this pizza and it was the first pizza I ever made. It has Manila clams, pancetta, chili flakes and lemon-thyme and Parmesan finished with some finishing oil. It is a really surprising pie. Intense flavors that send you back for another bite.
We followed that up with the Rosa Pizza inspired by Chris Blanco, the founder of Pizzeria Blanco in Arizona, one of the best pizza restaurants in the United States. It was watching his commitment to finding local ingredients and hand made flours steered me in the direction of Hayden Flour Mills, and the Rosa Pizza in particular that we chose to make that inspired us.
What makes this pizza so yummy is that it is actually a very simple pie. It has Parmesan, Thinly sliced red onions, fresh rosemary, and it is finished with chopped pistachio nuts that are introduced part way through the cook. It is a stunning pizza and I am sure we will make it again and again.
One of my very favorite pizza’s is the Classic Margherita. According to legend, it was invented by Chef Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi in Naples in 1889 for the Queen of Savoy. It is such a great pizza that it has stood the test of time. Made simply with tomato, mozzarella and basil, it’s always a magical flavor profile.
In the Seattle area, there is a pizza place called Pagliacci, and they are among our favorite pizza locations. They make interesting pizza’s and have a wonderful crust. Among the best of their pizza’s from our perspective is the Agog Pizza. This is a garlic infused olive oil base pie with roasted garlic, mushrooms, kalamata olives, Goat cheese, Fontina cheese, mozzarella cheese, parsley and fresh tomatoes. This was our first bake with the new dough, so this pie was a little under. The flavors were there, but we have to try it again with a proper bake.
We ironed out the bake time for the new dough, and now we are on a roll!
We next made an old staple. Pepperoni and Pineapple. This is Heather’s creation. It’s play on the classic Hawaiian Pizza, but instead of Canadian Bacon, she prefers the tang of pepperoni, and like I told her, as regards the pineapple, like with the “I need more cowbell” skit, we need more pineapple!
You can see that we are getting the bake on the pie perfected now, and yes, its delicious bite!
Feeling emboldened, we made the choice to foray into fusion foods. Having recently made a wonderful chicken mole, we decided to make a Chicken Mole Pizza. We used mexican cheese, mole sauce, shredded chicken, fresh mozzarella, a little fetta, red onions and fresh avocado as toppings along with fresh garlic chives. Let me say this about that. WOW! What an amazing pizza!
The next pie we chose to make was the Kimchi Pie from Ann Kim’s restaurant in Minneapolis. we are blessed to have access to SE Asian foods here in the PNW, so sourcing the ingredients was easy. This is a Korean Hot Sausage pizza with Kimchi and a couple of other hot ingredients. It has serrano peppers, a hot kimchi, sesame oil, gochujang and a blistering hot Korean Chili Sauce as well as scallions and both white and black sesame seeds to finish. It is without a doubt, one of the most delicious pizzas I have ever tasted. It is the definition of moreish. Both Heather and I said that even though it was so hot, we could not stop eating it, and, because we now have a few of the ingredients, we will be making it again next week. The best words for a chef to hear are, “Put that in regular rotation!” This was one of those pizzas!
Considering that we failed to use all the ingredients the first time we made it, because the pizza was so hot (sicy) we went back to the original recipe, and realized that we had not used tomato sauce in the base, but instead, we only used hot chili sauce. Oops! So we went again, this time making a spicy tomato sauce with hot chili sauce to offer a little acidity and sweetness. The result was MUCH better, and in fact, this is the best pizza we have made so far!
I cannot state how wonderful this pizza is. The Lady Zaza by Ann Kim is truly a special pizza. It’s spicy, and really delicious. The ingredients are a spicy Korean sausage, spicy Napa kimchi, thinly sliced green onion, on a tomato sauce base (we added the spice) along with gochujang and spicy chili sauce to finish. If you make pizza at home, make this one!
Our next effort took us in a totally different direction. Heather wanted to try the pizza she calls “Figgy PIggy”. It’s a fig jam base with mozzarella, thin prosciutto, and finished with Feta. For me, its a tad too sweet, although the saltiness of the prosciutto carries it quite well. Next time we make it, we will add lemon juice to the fig jam to add the acidity I think it needs.
We are getting better at baking pizza in our oven. We recently got a new oven that goes up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit, and I have experimented with where in the oven the pizza stone sits. In our oven, it works best if its in the middle on the lower of the middle rungs. We have also found that two other things matter. One is that we do not overload the pizza with ingredients. Having a “less is more” frame seems important in this exploration. The second thing that matters, now that I have perfected the pizza dough, it the cook. Remember, we heat the oven up with the stone in the oven so it is already hot, and I prep the pizza on parchment paper making it easy to slide it onto and pick up off the stone with our cookie sheet. Next, the time for the perfect bake is different for each pizza, but at no point is it less than 7 minutes. So, starting at 7 minutes we check the bake and add more time, in either one minute or 30 second increments based on the color of the edges. To put it in a nutshell, we are getting really good at this!
Last night, we made the “Jersey Girl”, this one is inspired by their ingredient list including Burrata, romano, tomato sauce, garlic, oregano, extra crispy pepperoni, basil, hot honey. It’s a real winner. Really good.
Here it is before the bake. Note that I crisped the fresh peperoni before we made it. You can also see the way we tried not to overload it.
We chose to revisit the Agog, inspired by Pagliacci in Seattle, making sure to get the bake right. It is a really great pizza!
As you can see, we are getting better at all three elements, getting the dough made correctly, not overloading the pizza and baking it correctly. Pizza is now on our menu as a regular go to dish. What makes it great is that you cannot buy the ingredients for just one pizza and there is a fair amount of cross over for ingredients. For example, we purchased Feta Cheese for one pizza, but used it for 4 others before we used it up. This means that on the whole, our grocery bill is much lower week to week even only making 2 pizza a week. For comparison, when we order a pizza, after delivery and tip we are spending over $50 for one meal. That is not terrible when eating restaurant prepped food for two, but it’s not something we do regularly. By comparison, the cost of the flour and yeast for two pizzas is under $3. The ingredients vary, but when you consider that various ingredients can be used multiple times before they are used up, the total cost for one pie is very generously, $10. Take the pie we made last night. Every ingredient on there is available for another pizza or two. We have Burrata, and romano, and tomato sauce, and garlic, and oregano, and pepperoni, and basil, and a bottle of hot honey all to use again. So, it is a very economical way of eating, and because we are making a thin 14″ pie or so, even half of that pizza is not so much food that it is very caloric.
Because we are so enamoured with Pizzas, we made this week a “Week of Pizza” week!
Our next pie was the Rosa, from Chris Bianco’s restaurant in Phoenix. As Chris puts it, this pizza is alchemy. Red onions and rosemary on parmesan, with a roasted garlic olive oil base (my addition) and then finished with pistachio nuts added with about 2 minutes of the cook to go. It is a beautiful bite of food. The fragrance of the rosemary, the sweetness of the onions, the crunch of the pistachio nuts and the bite of the dough is just yummy! It hits all the notes and as we clean our plates we say something to the effect of, “I really enjoyed that!”
Next up we went to the menu from PDX of Portland, a passion project of Chef Miriam, a NYC raised chef with good ideas. The pizza we chose to make was her Yum Yum Hawaiian which we modified by using a spicy tomato sauce, and peperoni (which we had in stock) rather than salami. We also used the jalapeno’s from the pineapple pickle and finished with hot honey. It was so delicious that we will make it again, but this time with Salami instead of peperoni. The pizza includes fresh mozzarella, romano, fontina, tomato sauce, oregano, basil, Genoa Salami, and 2-week pickled jalapeño pineapple
Next we went simple. The Burrata is a pie on the menu of Ken’s Artisan Pizza in Portland. It’s basically tomato sauce, basil leaves and fresh Burrata after it comes out of the oven. My first thought was, “Well, this is going to leave me hungry,” but, it was really filling and super delicious. Definitely the simplest pie we have ever made. Pizza perfection.
After enjoying Chris Bianco’s Rosa Pizza, we made the choice to try his Bianco Verde, Fresh Mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, Ricotta, and Arugula to finish over a red sauce. We used a spicy marinara. The pizza definitely has legs, the ricotta offers a creaminess, so we need to experiment with the red sauces to find the right combination, especially since his version does not use a red sauce. He is innovative in rethinking what pizza is. In any event, we enjoyed it, especially because the arugula wilts and tastes to yummy on top of the pizza, offering a pepperiness that is needed to offset the cheeses.
One of the things that happens when you make a series of different pizzas, is that you accumulate a fair number of left over ingredients. After we spent a week making pizza, a really great way of eating by the way, we found our fridge beginning to fill up with a lot of small left over cheeses and sauces especially. So, on Sunday night, we made the “What do we have left over in the fridge” Pizza. What did we have? We had pepperoni sausage, some two week jalapeno pickled pineapple, along with feta, fresh and grated mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, and arugula. Heather built the pizza she was craving. It was absolutely delicious!
This one is the best pizza I have ever tasted. Ever. And it’s not even close. This is a Thai Peanut Shrimp pizza, with spinach, ricotta, peanuts EVOO and Thai peppers, then finished with a squeeze of lime juice. It’s hard to describe the experience of eating this pizza, it’s moreish, it’s delicious, it’s divine, it’s spicy, it’s pure umami in every bite. One of the ways it was so much better was that I kept more dough on the base to it was slightly more chewable than crunchy (which I also like).
My Life: A Memoir 