Sometimes accidents are happy ones in the kitchen. I was trying to make dinner the other night and Greta was in the process of melting down – I simply waited too long to start dinner for her sake.
I tried to make my favorite pizza crust, from memory. Usually this isn’t so hard, but when your toddler is screaming, it doesn’t work as well. This crust appears in the previous post,
Best.Pizza.Crust.Ever for dinner and knew as soon as I started to mix, that something was wrong. I decided to roll with it, modified a few things, and hoped for the best. I guess there was always the option of a sandwich and a can of soup if this failed.
I realized I had doubled the water, so to compensate, I added more flour and some cornmeal. It ended up being so sticky that I did not knead it, instead stirring thoroughly. After rising (it filled the bowl!) I punched it down, coated my hands thoroughly in olive oil and spread it out on the cast iron pizza pan (works great on the grill, too!). When I baked the pizza, I used the convection setting to ensure it was baked thoroughly.
This crust turned out to be a fantastic deep pan-like crust that had a crispy exterior and a soft chewy interior. Eric having not been around for the mess-up, didn’t know the entire story. When he tried the pizza his first comment was, “Wow, did you make this?!” He said it was by far the best crust ever made in our house, so I quickly grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote down my error.
Greta wasn’t all grumps that night, she has been enjoying a new art app I got for my classroom – called Drawing with Carl. There are tons of neat paintbrush shapes to use – including this interesting pixelated one. There are roller brush patterns that turn into various patterns once drawn. Stamps create dots, stars, ink splats, and more. The icon with the red and green circle creates stickers of creatures, dinosaurs, facial features and more. The free version is very good – the upgrade offers more stickers plus a watercolor brush and oil pastels. I highly recommend this app for kids and adults alike. Eric always muses that I seem to like Drawing with Carl more than Greta does.
Add dinosaurs is by far her favorite part of this app. The dinosaurs and mammoth roar and make noises when added or moved around the screen. There is a funny little red guy with a big mouth – he has a neat feature too, but I will let you figure that one out for yourself.
{Better than} Best.Pizza.Crust.Ever. – makes one 14 inch deep dish pizza
2 cups tepid water (105 degree water)
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
2 tablespoons honey
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornmeal
1 packet active dry yeast
1. Mix flour and yeast in a bowl.
2. Mix warm water, olive oil, honey, and salt in a bowl or glass measuring cup.
3. Make a well in the dry ingredients. Add liquid ingredients and mix well – 5 minutes.
4. Let rise in a warm spot for 45 minutes. (Turning the oven on at 350 for one minute creates the perfect dough rising environment.)
6. Punch down dough and let rest for 10 minutes. In the meantime, preheat oven to 425 degrees, on convection setting and prepare pizza pan with oil.
7. Coat hands in olive oil, remove dough and stretch into size on pizza pan.
8. Add tomato sauce to top of dough and bake on bottom shelf of oven at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes before adding other toppings. This will ensure you do not get the doughy, uncooked center.
9. While your crust is baking, prepare toppings. (For this pizza I used sliced fresh tomatoes, sliced fresh mushrooms, basil, minced garlic, and sliced spicy meatballs – real or fake work fine).
10. Bake pizza in 425 degree oven for about 12 – 15 more minutes or til done, on the lowest oven rack.
Bluebird Hill Art 