Homemade Pizza – it’s what’s for dinner!
Inspired by Edwardo’s, my favorite Chi-town pizza.
Stuffed Spinach and Sausage PizzaDough-
4 t. sugar
3 pkg rapid rise yeast
2 c. warm water
5 c. all-purpose flour
4 t. salt
6 T. butter, melted6 oz. bag fresh baby spinach, washed and spun dry
1 lb. part skim mozzarella
8 oz. monterey jack
1-1/2 c. pizza sauce
1 c. diced tomatoes
2/3 lb. sweet italian sausage, browned and drained
1/2 c. parmesano reggianoPreheat oven to 475F. Lightly oil 14-inch deep dish pizza pan.
Combine yeast & sugar in warm water. Let sit for 5 minutes. It should foam up. Combine flour and salt. Add the butter, then add the yeast mixture. Combine and knead on floured surface until dough is soft and smooth. Let rise 1 hour.
Shred cheese. Put spinach in food processor to chop fine (or use frozen chopped spinach – defrosted and well drained). Mix mozzarella and jack cheese with the spinach. (You can use any cheeses you want – I added a little asiago because I had it in my fridge). Reserve parmesano for topping. Mix pizza sauce with tomatoes (canned or fresh). Cook sausage.
Assembly instructions below…
Recipe based on Stuffed Pizza with Spinach in The Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook (Pasquale Bruno, 1983).
ASSEMBLY & COOKING instructions
Ingredients prepped and ready to go.
Oblivious cat – not ready to go.
Divide dough into 2 pieces in the proportion 2/3 to 1/3. Roll the bigger piece into a circle slighty larger than pan. (if I knew how to throw it in the air and stretch it that would be the preferred method) There should be some overlap around the edges. Fill with spinach-cheese mixture. Put the sausage on top of that.
Roll out the second piece of dough to fit the pan exactly. Pinch and roll the top and bottom pieces of dough to seal and form a crust. Cut vents in the top to allow steam to escape.
Top the dough with the tomato sauce mixture. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
Bake the pizza on the bottom rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Move the pizza to the middle rack and turn the heat down to 450. Bake 25-30 minutes until crust is golden brown.
Remove from oven and let rest about 5 minutes before cutting.
Serves 6-8 hungry kittehs.
~♥~ Do not rec the Pony Party. This is Open Thread. ~♥~
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who wants a slice?
i can has pizza!
rather dated, but I’ve made some wonderful pizzas (& pizzettes) from it. Wore out my first copy & replaced it via Amazon (it’s out of print now; a bookseller in Texas had a copy, though, and I bought it a few years ago):
The Pizza Book by Evelyne Slomon
If you can browse it I think you’ll see what I mean by “dated”: lots of ingredients that were “new & exciting” in the 1980s and are sort of ho-hum now. But the mushroom, bechamel & cheese pizzettes have always been a hit (even when I turned it into a large pizza instead of pizzettes); and her pepper-lard dough is quite wonderful.