pizza party!

This weekend I strayed from Bittman inspiration and made a pizza. He might have recipes for sauce and dough somewhere in there, but I didn't want to haul the cookbook all over town with me so I improvised instead.

I've done homemade pizza before, but I've never made my own tomato sauce. And after lab this week I wanted to try the Jenny Breen not-really-measuring-just-going-by-feel approach to making dough for the crust. I'm used to winging it when I cook, but not when it comes to doughs and baking--so it's about time to give that a try!

Rise!

Flour (AP and whole wheat pastry), water, olive oil, honey, salt, yeast. I think as far as texture and consistency go, making up the proportions worked fine. It's definitely something I'll play around with again; I'd love to be able to throw together a good loaf of bread whenever I felt like it.

Next up--tomato sauce. I kept it simple: garlic and oregano cooked in olive oil, a pinch of salt, diced tomatoes. We had some tomato paste so I threw in a spoonful of that too.

I put the tomatoes in the food processor for a second to break them down a little.

My toppings: caramelized fennel, sausage, and roasted red pepper (which had been sitting in my freezer for MONTHS. I like to buy a bunch on sale, blacken them in the oven and freeze them).

Fresh fennel--it's such a beautiful plant!

I cooked the sausage first, took it out of the pan, then threw the sliced fennel in so it could brown in the leftover juices. Yum.

And of course, fresh mozzarella.

Possibly one of the cutest foods ever

By the time all that was done, the dough was ready so we rolled it out, assembled, and popped the whole thing in the oven. It came out golden brown and bubbly, and we definitely ate the whole thing.