Thick and Fluffy Pan Pizza

My eight-year-old is proud of the fact that she gets to “make dinner” (with help, of course) every Sunday; one of her favorite things to make is pizza. Sometimes we use storebought crust, sometimes ciabatta bread, and sometimes homemade dough– this new one, from Food52.com, is my new favorite!

The dough is extremely easy to put together– it takes mere minutes to stir up the ingredients, and a little attention for the first hour to gently fold it (rather than knead) a few times, during which it miraculously transforms from a shaggy dough to a smooth, stretchy one. After that it sits in the fridge for 1-3 days before a 2-hour rise in the pizza pan, and it results in the lightest, fluffiest (yet still chewy) pizza crust ever, with great flavor and a nice crispy outside.

No Knead Pizza Dough

I’ll admit, I usually buy my pizza dough in bags from the grocery store. It’s just so much easier than making it from scratch, and it’s immediately ready to use with no kneading or rising required. But sometimes the stars align and you have a bunch of pizza toppings wasting away in the refrigerator and no dough in sight, so it’s time to make your own.

I’m still lazy enough to want to avoid kneading, though, so I chose a no-knead recipe from Jim Lahey that develops gluten through a long rise instead. I mixed up my dough in the morning and left it on the counter all day– when I got back from work in the evening it hadn’t quite doubled (surprising since it was pretty warm in my house) but it was soft and silky, and easy to work with.

Nutella Twists

Have you ever bought a ball of fresh pizza dough from the grocery store, full of good intentions to make delicious, healthy homemade pizza… then looked into your fridge a week later to realize that you’d completely forgotten it and have no cheese or other toppings in the house? I did that this morning, and noted that over time the dough had slowly expanded so that it was straining to escape the confines of the plastic bag– it was definitely time to use it up.

Luckily I can think outside the box, and when I spied the giant jar of Nutella in my pantry I realized that I wasn’t confined to making actual pizza. Instead, I made these delicious breakfast treats (what? They’re no worse than donuts or danish!).

The Cake Pop Chronicles, Part II: Canned Doughs

After my experiment with blueberry muffins, I decided to put a different spin on things and see what resulted when I used canned crescent roll dough and pizza crust in the cake pop maker. I tried both savory and sweet fillings here, to see which worked better.