April 2009 Bon Appetit Recipes: 21-26
Friday night was pizza night at my house. We made the overnight pizza dough recipe and a variety of toppings to try it all out.
But first, we started the night with the Braeburn Apple and Walnut Haroseth. Bon Appetit’s version of this Passover Seder dish is made with honey, lemon, apples, walnuts and fresh mint. While all the ingredients I like individually, overall this dish was not my favorite together. It felt like something was missing – maybe adding cinnamon, which is traditionally in the dish, would have helped.
The Overnight Pizza Dough recipe was pretty easy, but very time consuming. It starts with a sponge that sits overnight, then you add flour in the morning and chill 6 hours and then you knead it out, separate it into smaller portions and let rise for 1 1/2 hours. I almost gave up just making the sponge – not that it was hard but that doughs just don’t like me. They refuse to cooperate and won’t rise for me – I don’t get it. I pushed through, using a heating pad under the dough for the last 1 1/2 hour to make sure they would rise. Lo and behold – they did and the dough turned out great! I don’t know that this would be a go-to dough recipe for me, though…I’ll have to keep searching for a less time consuming recipe.
The toppings that we used were:
Arugula Salad with Lemon-Parmesan Dressing: This was a recipe for a salad that suggested piling it on top of a cooked pizza dough. It looked and tasted fantastic and was a great way of eating a salad course.
Roasted-Tomato Sauce, Sausage, Kalamata Olives and Mozzarella: The tomato sauce recipe was just ‘ok’. There is a quicker and much tastier recipe for tomato sauce in the magazine for the Steak Pizzaola. Next time – I’ll use that one. Otherwise, this was a really great combo – yum!
Arugula-Pistachio Pesto, Grilled Asparagus and Mozzarella: Although the pesto recipe is really good – you got to love tangy arugula! – you could just as easily use the ramp or citrus pesto recipes that are also in the magazine (this would be an easy way to use up leftovers from previous recipes). We grilled the asparagus for just a minute or two with a brush of olive oil and then piled it on the pizza.
Caramelized-Onion, Rosemary, and Pine Nut Topping with Blue Cheese: This was my favorite pizza. Of course, with caramelized onions and blue cheese, how could you go wrong? The onions were sweet and the blue cheese was salty – perfect combination!
April 30th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times – Giada Easy Pizza Dough in Food Processor. No overnight sitting or other challenges.
May 1st, 2009 at 7:21 am
The pizzas look great, especially blue cheese and caramelized onions (we add walnuts to ours).
Gotta love the heating pad trick. Doughs don’t like me either (I make mine in the breadmaker), so I may have to use this trick in the future.