Sourdough Pizza Crust

I have a pot of sourdough starter sitting in my kitchen. His name is Beauregard, and that reminds me, I need to feed him. He had his first outing last night when I made sourdough pizza dough. The thing to remember about sourdough is that it’s not actually that sour. Commercial sourdough has god-knows-what added to make it overly sour, but if you’re making bread from a starter, you can sweeten it easily (using salt!), but making it more sour is actually a little tricky. So banish from your minds the sourdough from the stores; this is completely different. --AnglophileLV

For the sauce, I used around ½ cup of my homemade tomato sauce, 1 can tomato paste, a few dashes of dried oregano, a little garlic powder, and 3 teaspoons sugar (tomato tends to be acidic and tart so always taste your sauce to see if it needs sugar).

Note: If you pre-bake the shells, they will tend to stay fluffier. If you just top them and bake them, they will tend to be flatter.

Ingredients: (recipe source: Sourdough Home)

1 1/2 c mature Sourdough starter

1 T olive oil

1 t Salt

1 1/2 c Flour

Place your pizza stone in the oven if you have one and preheat oven to 450F. (Try 550F if your oven will take you there.)

Mix ingredients, working in the flour until you have a soft dough. If the dough gets too dry, add some more starter. If you've used all the starter, add a bit of water.

Once you've kneaded the dough, cover it with a damp paper towel and let rest for 1/2 hour. This lets the dough relax, so forming the pizza is easier. This recipe does not require the rising capabilities of sourdough, it just uses the taste of the starter.

Once the dough has rested, roll out into a flat round pie-like shape. I rolled my dough out on some kind of silicone parchment paper type thing, but non-stick aluminum foil would be my next best bet. Don’t use parchment if you plan to broil – I did that once, it burned to a crisp. Flames leapt. It was not good.

Once you have a nice round pie shell, you may pre-bake it or top it and bake it. To pre-bake it, bake about 5 minutes. It doesn't take long, so watch carefully.

After I prebaked the shell, I noticed that it wasn’t browning very nicely, so I brushed egg around the outer edge to make a pretty golden crust. Unfortunately, this made the crust a little crunchier, but it was still good. Then I dusted the egg covered portion with garlic salt.

When you're ready to top the pizza, rub a bit of olive oil on the surface, as this helps keep the crust from getting soggy. Then top with your ingredients. I went with mozzarella, parmesan (to help the cheese brown better), pepperoni, onions and green bell pepper. Then bake for 5 minutes and check – continue checking until the cheese is browned and bubbly on the edges. To get the veggies fully cooked, I had to put the broiler on for 40 seconds in addition to the baking time.

Fry Bake

This is essentially fried pizza dough - and if that isn't a good idea, I don't know what is. The fry bake is so puffy that you can split it open like a pita and fill it with things like my Carribean Pigeon Pea Curry, which is what I did. --AnglophileLV

Caribbean Fry Bake – makes 4

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4ths cups water* (Knead dough for a few minutes)
Vegetable oil for frying (enough to just cover the fry bake dough)
flour for dusting

Directions:
1. Divide dough into tennis ball size dough balls. Dust your counter, hands and rolling pin with flour and roll them out into 6 inch diameter circles.
2. Heat the oil in a deep pan and place the dough circle so it flops away from you (otherwise you could get spattered with hot oil).
3. When the upturned side gets puffy and the bottom side is slightly gold, use a fork try to flip it to the other side in a quick motion. Continue flipping until both sides are a nice golden brown color.
4. Take it from the oil at this point and place on paper towels to get rid of some of the excess oil.
5. Sprinkle with garlic salt.

Repeat these steps for the remaining dough you have.

Chicken/Paneer Tikka Pizza

Who doesn't enjoy a good pizza? I know; everyone's version of "good" differs. A brief history about my tastes perhaps will help. I used to love pizza hut, little caesars, etc. But around 2005, the visuals of thick layers of cheese and greasy dough just turned me off. But they taste sooo good, you say, and I agree!
Anyway around that time, i cut down my intake. From 2006-2008 I was in grad school and every Friday we had to have lunch with a visiting scholar and guess what was the lunch? that's right, more greasy pizza. Suffice to say, that's when I started cooking for myself and just the aroma of a pizza began turning me off. *sad-face*

So here we are now. I like pizzas again, but not the cheap greasy fast-food kind. I enjoy the weird thin crust versions with eclectic toppings (Welcome to California). But I don't like paying an arm and a leg for these. So I make them myself!

Since apart from putting it together and toasting it in the oven everything else is store bought, my pizzas are a super-quick dinner or snack.

Serves 1

Ingredients

Chicken/Paneer Tikka Masala (I had some leftover from dinner outside) 1-2 tbspn
Marinara Sauce (optional) - 1 tbspn
1 Whole Wheat Pita (can use whatever pita you prefer)
Cheese (I used Gouda and Havarti, because again, those were leftover and tasted much better than normal mozarella. Could mix all three!)
Some italian seasoning - a pinch or so to sprinkle on top of the pizza
Thai chillies (can substitute green pepper): thinly sliced (1 per pita)
Red onion : thinly sliced, less than a 1/4; depends on how much you like on your pizza


Method
1. Set oven to 400 degrees and let bread heat up for about 3 minutes.

2. Spread the marinara and tikka masala (chop up the chicken or paneer) onto the bread. You can go for 50-50 or put more of the tikka than the marinara.

3. top this off of the red onions, green chillies, sprinkle of italian seasoning, and cheeses.

4. put it back in the oven and at 425 degrees let this toast up until the cheese has melted and crust is crispy.

Cut into 4's and enjoy with a salad! Dinner done!