Mahalo Pizza Night

If you follow the blog you'll find that my main hobbies are boating, photography and cooking. I have been making pizza for about 25 years. Always improving each year but I have it pretty down now. 

Usually at home I make and knead the dough with my KitchenAid stand mixer. For the boat I decided to forego that and just make the dough by hand. It was very satisfying. After rising twice, then being refrigerated for two days, I take the dough out, separate into appropriate size balls and then let them rise again.

Our boating friends Ron and Kim gave us this cool stone pizza baker as a boatwarming present. Supposed to be like a brick pizza oven.  We are going to have a pizza party and give it a try. (Here's a link to the product on Amazon.)

We are cooking four pizzas and I'm making three of them. We want to cook them one after the other, so I got all my toppings ready "mis en place" style.

Up first, pear, gorgonzola, broccoli and pine nuts. After cooking, Ron told me it's important to rotate the pizza every two minutes or so. Under the unit is a vent, in the back, that's where a lot of the heat comes in.  So this one got done unevenly. Guess I forgot to RTFM.

Ron's contribution - Scampi. Deb and I don't eat garlic much, but they love it. Parchment paper is my trick for getting pizza easily onto a stone or steel. I know a lot of people use cornmeal but it doesn't work as well, and it burns and smells. Form your dough on baking parchment, add toppings, and then slide away. Pull it out about two minutes later. 

Had to do a meat lovers. Uli's Andouille (if you are from Seattle you know it), salami, pepperoni, olives and mushrooms. Tasted even better than it looks if that is possible.

I was excited to make this one. We bought these enormous shrimp at Pike Place. They really are like small lobsters. I found some Mizithra cheese, which is amazing. So this one is shrimp, mizithra, green onions, aged provolone. Right out of the stone oven.

And of course we had some wine and such. And literally this was the view as I scarfed down those delicious pizzas. What a great night. I can get used to this.