Passionate About Pizza: Making Great Homemade Pizza (41 page)

Bread Sticks

Bread sticks are a good accompaniment for any meal. They make a good appetizer, you can serve them with a salad, or they can go along with a pan pizza for those who just love to have extra pizza crust. My favorite accompaniment for bread sticks is this wonderful Bruschetta.

Bruschetta

Serve this as light appetizer with any type of bread sticks or pizza!
Makes about two cups.

1 pound plum tomatoes (about 6 or 7)
1 large clove garlic
1 Tablespoons sliced green onion tops (optional)
2 Tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Plunge tomatoes into boiling water for 1 – 2 minutes. Take tomatoes out and immediately plunge into cold water. Use a sharp knife and your fingers to remove the skin and core. Dice tomatoes into small pieces. Crush the garlic with a garlic press and add to tomatoes. Mix in remaining ingredients. Let the Bruschetta sit at least thirty minutes before using it.

Bread Sticks

Makes eight bread sticks.

1 recipe Basic Pizza Dough (see recipe
page 92
)
olive oil
parmesan or Romano cheese, if desired
salt, if desired
herbs, if desired
unbleached all-purpose flour (for kneading and shaping)

Resting
–
After the dough has risen, punch it down with one fist, take it out of the bowl, and knead it briefly (about one minute) without adding any flour, to release the large air bubbles. Shape it into a big ball. Sandwich the dough between two layers of plastic wrap and let it rest briefly on the counter for one or two minutes, certainly less than five minutes, before shaping it. Spread a thin layer of oil over the surface of a baking sheet that is at least fourteen inches long.

Shaping
–
You form bread sticks by rolling the dough out into long, thin cylinders.

Start by cutting the dough ball into four quarters. Then cut each quarter in half. This should leave you with eight pieces of dough. Roll each piece into a ball. Place the dough balls on a clean, out of the way section of your work area and cover them with a clean, damp kitchen towel. This will keep the remaining dough pieces moist as you shape the others.

One by one, roll each ball of dough to create a log-shape. To create the log, roll the dough between the palms of your hands as you move your hands back and forth. You want to keep your fingers parallel to each other and move your hands back and forth in only one direction such that the dough stays between your hands. This motion will shape the dough into a cylinder. As the cylinder becomes longer than the width of your hand, move your hands along its length to shape the cylinder evenly. As the cylinder becomes very long, you can place it on the work surface and, using both hands, roll the dough between your hands and the work surface to lengthen the cylinder further.

As you stop rolling, the dough will spring back a bit, and the cylinder will shorten. You can also pull the cylinder longer, using your hands on each end, if you want, but the dough tends to spring back even further when stretched this way.

Keep rolling or stretching until the bread stick is as long as you want it to be. The longer the cylinder, the smaller the diameter will be; similarly, the shorter the cylinder, the thicker the diameter will be. I recommend that you start with shorter, fatter bread sticks that are about eight to nine inches long.

Instead of forming long, thin bread sticks, it is possible to make pizza rings, pretzels, pizza braids, or any shape you want. To make braids or pretzels, shape the dough cylinders into the desired shape.

Place the shaped dough with one inch between each piece on the oiled baking sheet. Once you shape all of the dough pieces, place the clean, damp kitchen towel over the shaped pan, and let the dough rise for five to twenty minutes (longer rising will make thicker, bubblier bread sticks.

Assembly
– Immediately before baking, remove the towel from the pan. Using a pastry brush, gently brush a thin layer of olive oil on the surface of the bread sticks. Sprinkle the bread sticks with parmesan or Romano cheese, salt, or herbs, as you wish.

Baking
– Place the pan into the oven on the middle rack. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for five to fifteen minutes until the crust browns lightly. The instructions list a range of time because the temperature of different ovens can vary. You want to bake the bread sticks until the crust browns nicely but is not too dark.

I suggest that you stay close to the oven the first few times you make bread sticks. You might be surprised how quickly they bake. Thinner bread sticks and smaller forms will cook faster, so adjust your baking time accordingly.

Serving
– Bread sticks are best when served warm, so serve them as soon as possible after baking.

Variations

Dough
– Focaccia Dough, Basic Pizza Dough, California-style Sourdough, Half or Whole Wheat Dough, New York-style Dough, Rye Dough, Slow Rise Dough, Herman Sourdough
Assembly and Baking
– Pizza chips, soft pretzels, or any other shape.

Dessert Pizza

Dessert pizza is like a tart made with pizza dough instead of pastry. In fact, you can make almost any kind of tart into a pizza. Since people generally eat less for dessert, the dessert pizza uses only half of the dough batch.

Why would you want to make a pizza instead of a tart? Good question. And the answer is –because it is a pizza! Really, you just made a pizza dinner and you have your pizza stone in your oven and all ready. If you did not just make a pizza then you can pop your pizza stone into the oven and quickly preheat it. Why not place a dessert pizza in the oven to cook while you are eating the other pizzas? Maybe you are in the mood for pizza, but everyone else wants something else for dinner. Maybe you compromise and make what they want for the main course and you make a dessert pizza because it pleases you. Whatever the reason, Dessert Pizza is a fun way to end a meal! Any leftovers also make a great snack.

Fruit & Cream Cheese Dessert Pizza

Makes one ten to twelve inch pizza.

6 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 – 3 Tablespoons half-and-half or milk
1/4 pint blueberries
1/2 peach, peeled, pitted, and sliced
1 kiwi, peeled and sliced
1/2 recipe Herman Sourdough Dough (see recipe
page 106
)
unbleached all-purpose flour (for kneading and shaping)

Note that the Herman Sourdough Dough requires a Herman Sourdough Starter that takes several days to prepare. This particular dough has a sweet, tart flavor that complements this dessert recipe, so I think it is worth taking the extra time to make the sourdough starter. The picture below shows Herman Starter as it is when removed from the refrigerator where you keep it between uses. You must stir the starter to release its bubbles so that you can measure it accurately as you use it to make dough.

Topping
– Combine the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in a mixing bowl and mix until smooth with an electric mixer. If the cream cheese sauce seems too thick to spread, mix in up to one Tablespoon of half-and-half (or milk) to make it thinner.

Resting
–
After the dough has risen, punch it down with one fist, take it out of the bowl, and knead it briefly (about one minute) without adding any flour, to release the large air bubbles. Remember to use half of the dough for this pizza; you can either make half the dough recipe or make the full recipe and cut it into two pieces. Make a dough ball (with the half-recipe sized piece of dough) and shape it into a flat circle about one inch thick. Sandwich the dough between two layers of plastic wrap and let it rest briefly in the refrigerator for five to ten minutes before shaping it.

Shaping
–
Prepare Herman Sourdough Dough as directed. Stretch or roll out the dough into a twelve-inch circle and place it on a prepared pizza screen. You may want to leave a rim on the dough to keep the sauce from sliding off the pizza. Without the rim to hold the toppings in place, some of the toppings may spill over the edge while the pizza bakes.

Alternatively, leave no rim and roll a dough docker over the entire surface. The holes in the dough connect the top surface of the crust to the bottom surface. They also let the carbon dioxide produced by the pizza while it bakes.

Assembly
– Spread an even layer of the cream cheese sauce over the pizza to within one inch from the edge. The layer of cream cheese should be just thick enough so that you do not see bare spots through it, but be careful not to use too much because it will spread out as the pizza bakes. Spread the fruit slices evenly over the sauce in a pattern that pleases your eye. The sauce and toppings will migrate toward the center, so you should put a little less in the center; otherwise, the cooked pizza may be soggy in the center. The toppings may also migrate towards the edge of the pizza if there is no rim to hold them on the pizza.