Daring Bakers - Pizza

Once again I'm late doing this challenge and posting about it. This month's challenge was to make pizza dough and then top it with any toppings. Rosa at Rosa's Yummy Yums hosted the challenge and the recipe comes from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The kids love pizza so this was a good one to try. I haven't made pizza dough before, but it was really easy. I didn't bother with the big mixer, it was easy to mix by hand and then knead until smooth. I did have to plan a bit ahead since the dough needs to rest overnight in the refrigerator and then come out 2hrs before baking.

In the past I've used a rolling pin to make pizzas but I decided to try tossing the dough. I wasn't able to get pictures but nothing got dropped. Just stretching it out over two fists got the dough pretty thin in the middle but still round. I used Trader Joe's pizza sauce and cooked up some mushrooms and bacon for the toppings. I used to love having bacon pizza as a kid, it was always a real treat. Gina enjoyed helping put her pizza together. It was definitely a crowd pleaser (there were a few grumbles that we were missing olives) though I would like to try out some different pizza dough recipes to see how they compare.


Go to the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see all the other attempts at making pizza.

Rainbow Pizza

After my daughter refused to eat a perfectly good dinner and I completely lost it, I had her look through a new cookbook that I recently bought: The Great Veg Challenge, based on the blog by the same name (The book ended up costing $35 with the lousy exchange rate and shipping). The blog is written by a mom who got her two kids to try a range of vegetable based dishes starting with the letter A and going on through Z. I constantly have aspirations of getting my kids to try different dishes and this seemed like a good place to start.

Gina looked through the book and settled on Rainbow Pizza, a pizza made with chopped up rainbow chard stems, garlic and lots of cheese. I didn't have high hopes that she would like it, but she was enthusiastic about making it and did help me put it together. I used pizza dough from Trader Joe's. She helped me chop up the chard stems, and then I sauteed them in olive oil and garlic.

The sauteed chard looked pretty in the pan with the little bit of green among the pink and orange stems. The kids helped spread the oil on the dough, sprinkle the parmesan cheese and then the chard. Some slices of mozzarella cheese on top and it was ready for the oven.

The final product wasn't as colorful after baking but I thought it was good. Dylan also ate it and finished off his piece. As for the other two, no go. Andrew wouldn't try it in the end (big surprise) and Gina didn't like the finished product. Back to the book to try something else.

Th