Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Wednesday Fun #91 - Favorite Pizza Toppings

The Sexy Blonde just posted her Thin Crust Pizza recipe, and we just made homemade pizza ourselves for supper. While Mr. Kluges was helping 2 yo Penguin with her toppings, he offered to put ground-up centipede feet on hers...

Anyhoo, this does actually lead me to our Wednesday Fun for this week, which is...

What do you like on your pizza?

3 comments:

Big Daddy, Esq. said...

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to pizza...big hunks of really good Italian sausage, lots of FRESH mushrooms (button or crimini), and sliced (not chopped or diced) Vidalia onions. Mmmmm....mouthwatering! Suddenly I feel like I need to make a pilgrimage to Red's Savoy.... :P

The Dude said...

My absolute favorite pizza toppings come from a Gino's East deep dish out of Chicago: Spinach and Anchovies. Something about the Gino's crust with the tomato sauce, cheese, and those toppings just make for heaven on earth. :)

I'll have to post the reverse engineered pizza crust sometime.

The Dude said...

What the heck, I have a minute.

Gino's East style Pizza Crust Recipe

1 cup of warm water
1 package yeast
1/2 cup cornmeal or corn flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 T corn oil
2 ½ to 3 cups of cheap generic flour
Yellow food coloring – the real secret to why its yellow.

Take the water and put it in your mixer. add yeast and a touch of sugar. Let the yeast foam up to be sure that it is active. Then add the rest of the ingredients including 2 1/2 cups flour. I usually end up adding between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoons of yellow food coloring. Using a dough hook, kneed the dough until it is well combined. If the dough is sticky add a little more flour. The dough should be moist but not sticky. Let the mixer kneed the dough for 10 minutes. Put it in the oven to rise. If you desire a late in the day pizza taste (beer like), then let it rise all day.

Assembling the pizza -
Preheat oven to 350. After the dough has risen take your deep dish pizza pan (or a round cake pan with straight sides) and coat the inside of it with a very healthy coating of melted butter. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thick and up it in the pan. Then pinch the dough up along the sides of the pan. Now put your cheese, and I mean a lot, into the crust. Then add your spinach and anchovies, and finally your sauce. Bake in the oven until the crust is starting to brown and cheese is starting to bubble up through the sauce.