This month The Daring Bakers are making pizza for the first time.  Yup, that’s right.  This is the first time that we as a group have tossed and twirled dough around to make pizza!

Our host Rosa from Rosa’s Yummy Yums chose Peter Reinhart’s pizza dough recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice—coincidentally, last month’s challenge came from the same book—and left us endless options for toppings.

I did have a bunch of fancy thoughts about toppings—fig and feta over caramelised onions would have been gorgeous—but what with Lucas’s birthday and various other things, I was pushed for time this month.  So, I played it safe (and simple) and made pepperoni pizzas for Dave and I.

The dough was pretty sticky, more like a foccacia than any pizza doughs I’ve made before, but still relatively manageable.  The trouble came when I came to toss the dough…

I tried—oh, how I tried—to toss the pizza dough, but it was impossible.  Within two bounces on my floury little fists it was see-through in the centre and with a further toss it just tore.  I ended up pinching the edges of the holes together and praying that the pizza wouldn’t stick to the baking sheet.  Needless to say, I do not have a picture of my disastrous attempts and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be getting a job in a pizza parlour any time in this lifetime!!

I sauced the pizzas with a little passata, simply seasoned with some dried oregano, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar then piled on a mixture of shredded mozzarella and grated pecorino.  I tried to be restrained with the pepperoni slices, but wound up overlapping and tucking them in wherever I could as it looked so good!  When each pizza came out of the oven I added some freshly torn basil for extra flavour—echoing the herbs in the sauce—and colour.

My pizza was good, but… I have to be honest and say that I didn’t think this was the best pizza crust recipe ever.  It struck me that this was the sort of recipe that needed a furiously hot wood-burning oven—Hi Jeremy!—rather than a domestic oven to cope with the high water content.  It did develop good flavour overnight and it was very, very thin, but it came out doughy rather than crispy despite extra time in the oven.  (And believe me, my oven was very hot!)

I’ll be sticking with my current favourite crust recipe—the lavash crackers from last month’s challenge—for the moment, but I’m glad that I got the chance to try out a new recipe!

Thanks for a fun challenge, Rosa!  And don’t forget to check out the other Daring Bakers pizzas on the blogroll.

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Hay Hay, it’s Donna Day!

For ages now I’ve been stumbling across HHDD themes the day that entries close or just after. In December I decided to take charge of the situation and make a proper effort to keep an eye on ChichaJo ’s blog to ensure that I didn’t miss yet another one.

And hooray! My obsessiveness has paid off! This month’s theme for HHDD is pizza. Double-hooray!

Each edition of HHDD produces amazingly creative and beautiful entries and I’ll be the first to admit that I wanted to join the beautiful people—and food. I’m not sure how successful I’ve been in either the creative or beautiful departments, however I know that this pizza definitely tasted amazing, despite its rather homely looks!

My first instinct upon seeing the pizza theme was to recreate my favourite pizza: caramelised onion and feta with rosemary. It’s a triumph of sweet, sour, creamy and salty flavours. One of Mr Waitrose’s triumphs, in fact. However, as we’re (a) back on the eternal/infernal diet and (b) it’s not a pizza that Dave gets excited about—I am far too lazy to contemplate doing individual pizzas—I had to rethink things.

After some thought I settled upon making something more akin to comfort food than conceptual/cutting-edge stuff… meatball pizza.

Unlike 99% of the meatball pizza recipes you’ll find in a Google search, my meatball pizza actually contains bona fide meatballs. Lately I’ve been using an Allegra McEvedy recipe which contains two of my current darlings—pork and fennel—and makes meatballs packed with flavour that always manage to be succulent despite being baked. By happy coincidence, I happened to have a bag of them stashed away in the freezer.

Alas, my sensible stashing of food in the freezer never seems to extend as far as putting tomato sauce in there, so I put together a pretty basic tomato sauce. In deference to my week of regional Italian cooking, I did make a proper soffrito and also let the sauce bubble gently for two hours, but I’d also happily use a quick 15-minute sauce or even a jar of pizza sauce. On this occasion I had the time to let the sauce cook for ages… so I did.

I’m happy to report that the pizza delivers a double-whammy of comfort. It’s got all the familiarity and comfort of a pizza plus the spicy, snuggled-up on the sofa feel of a good bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. I was particularly pleased that I thought to drape slices of mozzarella over the meatballs to keep them from drying out. Of course, gooey cheese on top of meatballs tastes fantastic, too!

Boot notes: This is more of an Italian-American dish, although it does have its roots firmly in Naples where all the individual components hail from. So, here’s to my second dish from Campania!

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Lucas had a little friend (T) over to play on Monday so I thought I’d do a little bit of baking for us all. I’ve been eyeing the cookie chapter in Dolce Italiano since it arrived, so I felt this was a good enough excuse for some full-fat baking.

I want to make every single cookie recipe from Dolce Italiano–from the chocolate kisses, to the zaletti, to the mosaic biscotti, they all just sound so enticing. As much as I love chocolate, lemon is Lucas’s favourite flavour in the whole wide world–although beef runs a close second–so I chose the Lemony Semolina Cookies.

The majority of lemons in Italy come from the sun-drenched Amalfi coast—running between Sorrento and Amalfi itself–in the Campagnia region. I particularly liked that this recipe calls for both fresh lemon and limoncello for an added burst of intense lemony goodness. I made some limoncello last summer, and while I’m not 100% happy with it—I think I grated in some pith as it’s a bit on the bitter side—I’m always pleased when I get to use my ‘own’ ingredients, if that makes sense. (I should point out that I used a quarter of the amount of limoncello called for since I planned for the kids to be eating them.) With the distinctly southern additions of semolina and extra-virgin olive oil, I’m quite happy to slot this recipe into the Campagnia region.

If your butter is nice and soft, this is a very quick dough to bring together. As I knew Monday would be a whirlwind of tidying—how does one keep a house vaguely neat with a toddler around?—and lots and lots of fun, I weighed out the dry ingredients and left the butter out to soften the night before. The dough came together really quickly and had a beautiful lemony-yellow colour to it, thanks in part to the extra egg yolk. I rolled the dough into quite small balls as I wanted to have cookies that were just the right size for little hands. It was an additional bonus that they came out looking afternoon tea dainty.

I made a full sheet of cookies and within half an hour there were only three left, which speaks for itself really. Lucas and his friend T kept toddling over and helping themselves, and best of all… actually eating them instead of stuffing them under the sofa or inside toys as children are so fond of doing.

These cookies are deliciously crunchy, lemony enough to suit any lemon-head and not too sweet. They go equally well with tea or coffee and would probably be very nice along with a glass of limoncello after a heavy dinner in place of a more traditional dolce. I love the sparkles from their quick dip into sugar before baking.

Next time I’ll make them with the full amount of limoncello called for; maybe splitting the recipe into adult and kid batches would work? While two tablespoons spread over five dozen cookies is practically homeopathic, I didn’t feel comfortable serving up boozy cookies to a mum friend and little ones; I think 14 months is a bit early to discover if Lucas is a mean drunk or not!!

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I’m not normally a fan of St Delia’s recipes (she’s very patronising) but I when I spotted Souffléed Macaroni Cheese I couldn’t resist trying it out. I adore macaroni cheese and I was really intriegued by the souflee concept. Plus, I’ve never made souffle before, so it would also be a challenge!

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