So, it is a rule to eat and cook your favorite foods, and anyone growing in the ninja turtles era probably likes pizza. maybe pizza just rocks on its own? probably.
fresh bread cheese and wine is pretty much the greatest thing ever. pair together the best ingredients you can find and you'd see how the first statement is only half true. pizza's got it beat.
so, when it comes to pizza i'm more inline with the cheeseboard approach, which is olive oil and mozzarella at its base, with toppings that work well together. i spotted a radicchio at the store that seemed to want to be on my pizza, but what else? hmm, well, i've done a pizza with endive. they're both chicories. add fontina? but this mozzarella in the fancy section is like 70% off... mozzarella it is. add toasted walnuts.
i'm going to go into a bit more detail today, since i feel like it.
to make the dough, I put 1 T of yeast into a bowl of 1.5 cups of warm water, you can add a pinch of sugar to help them out, but I did not. Wait 5 mins. Next I added 2T of Olio Nuevo, 1.5tsp of salt, then 1.5 cups of 00 flour. i put on the paddle attachment onto my kitchen aid and let it run for about 5 minutes at medium speed. added another 1.5 cups of flour and switched out to the dough hook. then, slowly added more flour and watched as the dough started to leave the sides, kept adding a little more flour and the dough started to shine. i stopped, rubbed oil all over it, covered with plastic wrap and left it in a warm place to double. its nice to use a bowl with markers, otherwise a clear container and tape or pen marks works too.
the toppings,
radicchio is quite bitter. so i decided to cook it down a bit with some more olio nuevo and garlic and red pepper flakes. added some parsley after they wilted and salted it up. splashed some sherry vinegar on it. the toppings really need to be able to stand alone.
i put a touch of walnut oil into a small pan and some walnuts and tossed them around and toasted them a little.
since my mis-hap with the 00 for my last pizza i tried to roll out the crust as thin as possible. put it on a pizza pan.
at this point you have an oven thats been heated to 450 for atleast an hour.
rub some more of that precious oil on top of the pizza, spread out some cheese, add the radicchio, the walnuts, put a little more cheese on top... i was going to put some parm but i didnt want to unseal it from its packaging just for one pizza.
place the pan on a rack in your oven, for about 10 minutes.
remove and place directly onto a pizza/baking stone for another 4 minutes or until it looks yummy.
the method, works when you don't have like a 1000 degree wood burning oven.
I ended up putting a bunch of chopped parsley on top too. that picture might've been prettier. this pizza came out great.
