Pizza!

Last night, we made a deep-dish pizza with an olive oil and cornmeal crust. 

A bit more than a year ago, Andrew started making bread at home using Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois' recipes in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. We loved how easy the recipes were; we could quickly make a batch of dough to keep on hand in the fridge and then pull off what we needed to have fresh bread ready in minutes. And few things make an apartment smell better and instantly more homey than crackling bread as it comes out of the oven. 

Then, last fall, Jeff and Zoe came out with Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day. While we had started to play with pizza dough recipes using the original AB in 5 instructions, we were excited to experiment using their new cookbook, particularly because of our love for deep-dish pizza (actually, we love all kinds of pizza). There wasn't really a great deep-dish place in Minneapolis, and we were craving the heartier, saucier, "Chicago-style" pizzas; at one point, Andrew even considered having the pizza shipped to us from Lou Malnati's! 

We decided, though, that our pizza would probably taste better if we made it in our own kitchen instead of having the frozen version delivered from Chicago. Many pizza pies (and plenty of smoke alarms, thanks to our old apartment's poor ventilation) later, we've become fanatics. The AB in 5 method works just as well for pizza dough as it does for baguettes and pita bread! 

In the past, we've made mini-deep dish pizzas using our little staub cocottes, but last night, we went all out and used the biggest cast-iron pan we have. We have found that the olive oil and cornmeal dough works the best for deep-dish, as it gives the pizza a thick and crumbly crust. 

We stuffed our pizza with eggplant, pepperoni, red pepper, garlic, and mozzarella, topped it with homemade tomato sauce (crushed tomatoes, onion, butter, fennel pollen, and red pepper flakes - so, so good!), and set it to bake for about 45 minutes. We tried letting it rest for the recommended amount of 10 minutes, but couldn't wait that long so we cut in after about 5. Topped with fresh basil and a sprinkling of pecorino cheese, this was one of our best pizzas to date. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it - thankfully we still have most of it for leftovers! 

Do you make pizza at home? If you don't, definitely check out AB in 5 for pizza - it's so easy, and actually quite inexpensive to make the dough in your own kitchen!