Pizza!

This weekend I was cruising around the blogasphere and found a recipe for bread dough that you keep in your refrigerator and then use for pizza, rolls, bread - whatever.  It looked easy and sounded perfect for those days when there isn't time for rising and waiting.  I decided to try it.  Yesterday I whipped up a batch of dough (a five minute endeavor) plus two hours rising, then into the refrigerator.  The recipe is here at Our Piece of Country Paradise. 

Tonight I decided to use the dough to make pizza for dinner.   It worked GREAT!!  I don't usually cook on work nights but this was on the table within an hour of me walking in the door.

This is what the dough looks like when you pull it from the fridge.  I store mine in a tupperware with the lid loose.  It was kind of flat when I put it away yesterday but by tonight it was puffy and full of bubbles.

I pulled out a handful and stretched it into a ball, covered it with a piece of plastic wrap sprayed with Pam , and let it rest for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, I had the oven heating up with the pizza stone inside.

Then I pulled the dough into a sort of pizza shape (hey, its a free form rustic pizza, okay?) and put it on my cornmeal dusted pizza peel.

When I tried to put it in the oven, it wouldn't slide onto the pizza stone.  It stuck.  So I took it out and put it on a piece of parchment paper.  That slid into the oven beautifully. 

The pizza ended up looking VERY rustic after being smushed around to get it on the parchment paper.  But, OMG, it tasted great.  The crust was to die for.  It had nice big airy holes, chewy, and awesome taste.  I highly recommend this recipe!









We had some Italian red wine with dinner.  Brett was gone for four days visiting his daughter in the Seattle area and he just got home today.  This was his "welcome home" dinner so we HAD to have wine.  This past weekend, while he was gone and while I was waiting for the huge storm that never came, I made some gingerbread.  I had an awful craving for it.  Brett had a piece for dessert.

....with just a little whipped cream.  :)

Seriously, I'm very happy to have him home.  It's a lot of work taking care of critters in lousy weather by myself, bringing wood in, and not having anyone to warm up the sheets when I get in bed.  Honestly, that was the worst because we don't heat the bedroom and the sheets were freezing!