Hand-Tossed Pizza and a Simple Salad
Nothing like a homemade pizza dinner on a Sunday night. I love making my own dough now (though it’s still somewhat soggy in the center, not as clay-oven crisp as I’d like it to be) though it does take time and make a mess in the kitchen, what with flour and cornmeal thrown everywhere. With whole wheat flour instead of the high-gluten Italian one she recommends, I made dough from Melissa McCart‘s recipe, which appeared in The Washington Post’s Food section (I carted the hard-copy all the way out to Oregon with me:). Sauce was from 101 Cookbooks (fresh lemon zest really brightens it up!) but with pureed tomatoes, instead of crushed, for that smooth pizza sauce texture. We topped the pizzas with feta and mozzarella, roasted garlic, rosemary-sauteed potatoes and spinach. No complaints here:)
For a light salad accompaniment, I drew inspiration from Mark Bittman’s recent post on this refreshing fennel-celery salad, with the sweet addition of a crisp, thin-skinned Asian pear.
BaltimOregon to Maine 
What a great meal! I’ve never made pizza crust from scratch. But I’ve found it can be tricky to substitute whole wheat flour for all purpose flour — the texture when it bakes is so different. I usually do half whole wheat and half white if I want to make a recipe healthier. And I heard that baking on a pizza stone instead of a cookie sheet, helps keep a crust crusty — but I dont have one, so don’t really know!
m-i-l
March 2, 2009 at 6:36 am
Yeah, we have a pizza stone, thanks to my dear friend Hannah. But we still cooked on a sheet on top, because we don’t have a pizza peel to transfer it onto the stone in a 500 degree oven. We’re experiment more though. Key is to get the oven as hot as possible, I think.
baltimoregon
March 2, 2009 at 10:35 am
potato pizza sounds like bad idea..
rd
March 2, 2009 at 9:57 pm