You know when you just keep putting things off for no reason whatsoever? They usually are the simplest tasks too, like writing an email, or making a phone call. But for some reason, you just can’t do it. That’s what happened to me. I had made homemade Twix candy bars to post on Halloween! How perfect! How fitting! How tasty! But I just didn’t upload the photos onto my computer.
Which normally wouldn’t matter, because I could just upload them on the day I wanted to post about them. That was yesterday. I really should have thought ahead because sometimes little storms named Sandy turn into superstorms, and leave you having to evacuate your home for days at a time, allowing for no time to do the things you put off for so long. My place of evacuation happened to lose power as well, because remember, this storm was super, and all I could think of was why I didn’t just upload my pictures of homemade candy when I had the chance.
But there’s a silver lining in everything. Power was restored in my place of evacuation! And you get a back-logged recipe of a delicious and extremely easy pizza dough that I made several weeks ago. The only bad news is that I made a double recipe of this dough – the other part is sitting in the freezer of my lonely, non-powered, evacuated home. I will probably have to make this again.
Simple Pizza Dough (recipe from Kelsey’s Essentials)
The pizza I made with this delicious dough was a tad makeshift. Which is the way to go for hurricane season, but I’ll give you the gist of it anyway. I took a quarter of the dough, rolled it out as thin as possible, and laid it on a cornmeal dusted baking pan. I spread some herby goat cheese on the dough, and then layered with blanched kale and sliced crookneck squash (quickly mixed with a little brown sugar and salt). I then layered a bit of cheese on top (I really don’t remember the name of it. It was fancy and too expensive, and therefore must have been delicious) and baked in a 375 degree oven (usually pizzas are baked at a higher temperature, around 450, but remember my fiasco from last week?!), for about 25 minutes for a perfectly thin and crunchy crust. Yum.
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups warm water
1 envelope active dry yeast (or rapid rise yeast)
2 tsp. sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups bread flour, plus more for kneading and dusting
2 tsp. salt
non-stick spray
Directions
In a small bowl, combine the warm water, yeast and sugar. Allow the yeast to dissolve bubble up, about 5 minutes, then add olive oil.
Meanwhile, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour and salt. Stream in the water/yeast mixture. As the dough begins to come together, switch to a dough hook attachment. Allow the dough to knead, on medium speed, adding a bit more flour if needed, so that the dough releases from the sides of the bowl, 1 to 3 minutes. You should be able to touch the dough and not have the dough stick to your fingers. Once the dough has kneaded and has pulled away from the sides of the bowl, remove the dough from bowl to a floured work surface and, with floured hands, continue to knead it by hand for 1 to 2 minutes until smooth. Then form the dough into a round ball and place it into a large bowl sprayed with nonstick spray. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a clean dish towel and let the dough rise in a warm area until it doubles in size, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. After the dough has risen it is ready to be used or frozen!
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