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September 6, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
Wood-fired pizza and great beer.
We took a trip over the weekend to Rehoboth Beach. In our opinion, a trip to the beach without a visit to Dogfish Head is like pizza without the toppins, and since a visit to Dogfish at dinner time often involves a 2 hour wait, we stopped in just as it opened, at noon. We grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered our first round: a Punkin Ale for me, and for Nikc, a Hot Thoup!. What’s a Hot Thoup!?
It’s a carrot ginger non-carbonated imperial beer served at 90 degrees. Was it any good? Well, if you ask Nikc, he says, “It was like one of those things that was not great – it was interesting, and better than some of their other experimental beers.” If you ask me, it “tastes like bucket water you’d clean your toilet with.”
For our second round, jealous Nikc went with a Punkin Ale, and I went with a Palo Santo Marron, which was a really great brown ale. I’ve been really into brown ales lately, and this one had that nutty toffee flavor that I love, with a tanginess like a dark roast coffee that I also love.
Our second round came out with our pizza, which was a special for the day: A Bird in the Hand. (more…)
Category Pizza Review | Tags: , apples on pizza, dogfish head, hot thoup, quail egg pizza, quail pizza | 2 Comments
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August 30, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
A quick and easy way to use up leftovers and farmer’s market finds.
This entire summer, we’ve had so, so many vegetables lying around. Heirloom tomatoes at the peak of juiciness, tiny new potatoes, those long, unidentifiable slightly spicy peppers that everyone seems to be growing in their yard, green beans, beets, butternut squash… we don’t even know how we accumulate all of these things. The good news, though, is that we always find a way to use them up.
This week, we went with what we had: vegetables, cheeses, and some pre-made items from the fridge. And just because it’s hot out, we grilled everything on top of those naan flatbreads.
We used leftovers from a salad from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty, and those Gwyneth Paltrow slow roasted tomatoes. (more…)
Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , grilled peppers, leftovers pizza, marinated mozzarella, naan pizza, tomato pizza, whatever pizza | No Comments
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August 23, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
Is a pizza without cheese still a pizza?
Well, is it?
I don’t know. This week’s offering is definitely more flatbread-like than pizza-esque. But that’s ok. See, we’ve been using this Couch to 5K app to get some exercise in, and since we started week 2 today, we decided to keep it easy and light in terms of pizza. You know, because during those 30 minutes, we felt like we wanted to die. Also, I saw my shadow. Kind of a rude awakening.
Last summer we were all about grilled pizza. We made a version similar to this, and were amazed. Here is this overwhelmingly Hawaiian combo of ham and pineapple, but with the simple addition of sage it turns into something completely different. Sage tricks you into thinking you’re eating something hearty and bad for you, like sausage or rich creamy pasta. But really, all you’re eating is a handful of leaves you’ve scavenged from your back yard. I call that a win. (more…)
Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , ham pizza, hawaiian pizza, lunchmeat pizza, sage pizza | No Comments
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August 16, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
It happened.
After last week’s cop-out recess (which we can only blame on the new dog), we’re back with a new pizza. And it’s a good one. A delicious, random, delicious, good one.
I’m not generally a big fan of ordering deli meats in the grocery store; there’s something about stepping up to a crowded counter that really annoys me. But I did it, just for you guys, I did it, and I happened to step up just after a man and his two sons. They eat a lot of lunch meat. And they also get a lot of samples. And I did a lot of waiting, but you know what? It was worth it, because not only did I get a free sample of bologna (you better believe I grabbed that free slice with my filthy cart-pushing hands), but it resulted in a really great pizza this week.
We kind of winged the cheese, since I kind of forgot to buy it, but we had a good random selection in the fridge so we went with it.
Oh! And! We have a new pizza tool. As alluded to last week, we bought a new pizza stone. After doing a little research, we ended up going the cost-effective route of Dough-Joe’s pizza tiles. And, to make things even cheaper, we got a deal on some scratch-n-dent ones. They’re not bad at all, and they make a damn good pizza. (more…)
Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , bologna pizza, dough joe, whole foods pizza dough | No Comments
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August 9, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
No post this week because this week we’re still figuring out this:
But don’t worry next week we’ll be back with a new pizza that we cook on this:
And if you really NEED a pizza recipe, why not check out this: http://www.pizzathursdays.com/ham-local-honey-pizza/
Category Uncategorized | Tags: , bulldog, dough joe, honey pizza | No Comments
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August 2, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
Sometimes it doesn’t work out…
Our pizza attempts don’t always turn out. Shocker, I know. But in the interest of full disclosure, we talk about those too on this blog. There’s no Pizza Thursdays test kitchen. Seriously, we don’t need another reason to eat more pizza.
This week, we tested out another recipe from Jim Lahey’s My Pizza, and since we had a vegan friend over, we decided to modify it. We also threw together a potato pizza using ingredients we had on hand. (more…)
Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , eggplant pizza, jim lahey, my pizza, pizza stones, vegan pizza | No Comments
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July 26, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
We try out a few recipes from Jim Lahey’s new book, “My Pizza.”
This Pizza Thursday, we made four pizzas. We had two guests over, so if you do the math, that’s one pizza for each person. There were no leftovers.
I’d say the pizzas were good.
We have been using Jim Lahey’s no-knead dough pretty religiously for Pizza Thursday, so when we saw that his new book, “My Pizza,” came out, we grabbed it. We tried out his crust recipe from the book, which was slightly different from the version in Bon Appétit – it made four rather than seven pizzas – and we ended up having the greatest success in terms of crust yet. It sat out at room temperature for about four hours, and it showed. The dough developed lots of bubbles and was super pliable.
We used the Lahey method – that is, preheat the oven and pizza stone for at least a half an hour at 500˚, then pop your pizza in, turn off the oven and kick on your broiler.
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Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , jim lahey, jim lahey book, my pizza, my pizza review | 1 Comment
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July 19, 2012 by Laurynn
We found the perfect pizza.
A recent two day trip to Philly yielded what we’d call the perfect pizza.
After walking and driving around a bit, and also checking the city paper, we kept seeing all these signs for pizza. Philly’s Best! World Famous! Pizza Buffet! Biggest Slice in Philly! (tempting)
We’ve always been a fan of wood-fired brick oven pizza; it imparts a delicately smoky taste, with little dots of char here and there. We like our crusts with character. So at lunchtime we did a quick google maps search of the city for wood-fired pizza and came upon Pizzeria Stella.
We made our way there, and were seated immediately without a wait. Our timing was impeccable though, because just after we were seated crowds started pouring in. We got a nice spot by the window, with what appeared to be a 1940s army hospital privacy screen to keep our table a little more private:
We decided to share a pizza; nothing more, nothing less. We were in a big city, and didn’t want to blow our caloric intake for the day in one sitting. They had 13 types of pizza on their menu, in addition to a daily special pizza; their daily special happened to have sweet corn and some sort of mushrooms. I was swayed strongly in the direction of the special, but Nikc convinced me that we needed to try their pepperoni pizza. I can’t turn that down, so we went for it. (more…)
Category Pizza Review | Tags: , good pizza in philly, philly pepperoni pizza, philly pizza places, sarcone's bakery, stella pizza, tomato pie | 2 Comments
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July 12, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
A Caprese pizza ending in disaster.
CLUNCKCKC. It was the calm waiting period after we placed our pizza in the oven. We thought nothing of it. Minutes later, we peeked in to check our pizza only to find that our pizza stone was now in two pieces: a waxing gibbous and a waning crescent.
Well, our hand-me-down Pampered Chef pizza stone, circa 1991, finally bit the dust. Perhaps it was too many hours at 550˚; or maybe it was too much oil on our pizza. Either way, R.I.P. pizza stone. Onto the next big thing in pizza baking technology, I suppose. In better news, we’ve finally got the pizza peel down – semolina flour is a must. Just a moderate sprinkle and the pizza stays nice and slippery. This week we took our inspiration from a Caprese salad; all this basil taking off everywhere had us both drooling over the tomato/fresh mozz/basil combo. We spruced ours up with a little garlic basil-infused olive oil and a drizzle of balsamic olive oil.
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Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , basil oil, caprese salad, caprese salad pizza, garden tomato pizza, oven cracked pizza stone | 3 Comments
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July 5, 2012 by Laurynn & Nikc
An Italian-style pizza with homemade mini meatballs.
Readers, meet our newest tool:
That is an aluminum pizza peel, which we decided we were ready to handle, being pizza bloggers, and apparently overly confident. We really screwed up this week.
We took care to flour up the peel, flour our crust, and place it carefully onto the peel for a few cursory shakes. It was sliding all over the place, like it should, so we ran with it. We threw on our toppings, and that’s when it happened: nothing. No sliding motion. It was stuck. Sonofa…
So we stuck the whole shebang, 2-foot handle and all, into the fridge for a few minutes. Still, nada. So then we decided to turn on the broiler, prop open the oven, and broil the pizza directly on the peel. After a few minutes of this, it firmed up and started sliding again, so we slipped it onto the pizza stone. Sadly, it was too late. (more…)
Category Pizza Recipe | Tags: , aluminum pizza peel, how to use a pizza peel, meatball pizza, mini meatballs, pizza peel | No Comments