bye, zucchini.

I decided I would try my hand at creating my own pizza dough this week. Mostly, because I couldn't sleep one night around 2am and Mike was snoring away and I knew I had all the ingredients. It went, well, okay. I've never done it before, and it's always looked SO easy. It probably is if you have a stand mixer. I have two hands and a tiny kitchen.
I looked around through recipes and kind of adapted the one I thought would taste the best. I feel like I ended up adding in a lot more flour than I started with, because the dough was just way too sticky to handle. Who knows what I ended up with in there, but I can say it was delicious and chewy and crispy and could have used more salt.

I mixed one packet of instant yeast in 1 3/4 cups of warm water and added in 1 tablespoon honey. While that bubbled I mixed three cups of whole wheat flour with one cup of all purpose and about two teaspoons of salt. I added in the water, along with about 1/4 cup of olive oil to the dry until it got pretty damn sticky. I added in more flour and kept kneading until it made a neater ball. I covered it with a damp towel and let it rest for about an hour. After it expanded, I kneaded again, separated half and oiled it up in my hand and put it in the freezer in a ziploc. The other piece went into the fridge in a similar container.

The next day I took it out of the fridge and let it rest for about 20 minutes while I heated my sheet pan in the oven at 450. I took out my rested dough and placed it on the board with more flour and kneaded it again, making sure I had a good amount of flour underneath.

I spread out a minced raw garlic clove with some extra virgin olive oil on the top, then spread on some leftover tofu ricotta and laid out thinly sliced zucchini to cover the top. I sprinkled with hot pepper flakes and tried to move it to my sheet pan. Fail. The toppings did not want to come with (why did i spent so much time layering that zucchini?) and I ended up re-doing it once it was on the sheet pan. I'm convinced this is why pizza should be made with a peel and a stone and why I've never attempted it before. Anyway, no big deal, I slid it over and baked it in the oven for about 15 minutes, until I could smell yumminess. When it came out I zested some lemon on top and drizzled with more olive oil and a sprinkle of salt.

Deeelicious. I used the rest of the dough to make some rosemary foccacia. I love a carb.