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Andy makes good pizza. That’s all you really need to know. It can be 7:30 already and he can whip up yeasty pizza dough, wait for it to rise, roll it out, and we’re still eating by about only 9pm. I think that’s rather fast.
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As prepared in last night’s post, we blanched 10 plum tomatoes, removed the skins and seeds, and let them sit all day with the vines seeping flavor in.
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Normally Andy’s cheeseless spectacular is tomato and olive but we were out of olives. Actually, I lie, we had some calamata olives in the fridge but they looked dodgy. Not so dodgy that say Beth Howe wouldn’t have eaten them but way too dodgy for us. After spending the day powerwashing 20 years of green slimey moldy moss off the breezeway panels in our garden, let’s just say the olives were bringing back some bad memories.
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So instead I raided the pantry and found some caramelized sweet peppers. Perfect. A little on the red and red side, but hey, those peppers get us to another 1 of the 5-a-day for today. A little fresh basil at the end helped balance the colour palette. Some hot sauce and a little salt and we were in business.
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I asked Andy to make enough dough for me to make up a designer cheeseless pizza myself. I heard lots of muttering under his breath as I fried up some bacon and then sautéed an enormous bag of spinach. I never let that get to me; he always ends up enjoying my creations. To push his buttons more, I started to lay out the spinach in horizontal stripes on the dough. Then I took out some walnuts and spread those along as well. So in the end my stripey pizza was sautéed spinach, tomatoes, bacon and walnuts.
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Weightwatchers points: believe it or not about 10 points for a meal of a half of each of the pizzas. Amazing when you hold off on the cheese and are in control of the ingredients and oil used – and that’s with bacon and walnuts!
Would Andy be willing to share his 10 pt. pizza dough recipe? I'm jonesing for some pizza and am having a hard time with a low point option.
ReplyDeleteIt's basically flour - something about a cup of bread flour, which under UK's weightwatchers is 6.5 points. Beth tells me this is 9 points in the US weightwatchers, so maybe I cheat a little bit between nations. Put it in a bowl, throw in a hefty pinch of salt (0 pts), about a tsp of olive oil (1 pt) and a sachet of quick acting dried yeast (0 pts). Stir it all up, then mix in warmish water to make the dough. Knead it down, and let it rise for a bit.
ReplyDeletePretty much, that's it.
Because you're making the pizza without cheese or meat, and with just tomatoes (lots of them, still 0 pts), some olive oil (maybe 2 tsp - 2 pts), garlic (0), basil (0), oregano (0) - you get your pizza for something around 10 points. Add some olives (my w/w says 10 olives = 0.5 points) and it makes little difference.
Even with the US numbers, you're getting only to something like 12 or 13, I guess.
What I do with the tomatoes is, after peeling and seeding and chopping fairly fine, I let the really watery stuff drain out in a colander, because you don't want soggy pizza. Then mix that in with the 2 tsp of olive oil and the crushed or chopped garlic (decent amount, given that there aren't many other flavourings: perhaps 2 or 3 big cloves), and salt and pepper and oregano, and let that sit whilst the dough rises. Let's the flavours infuse through.
Then the simple bit is get the pizza stone as hot as possible, by leaving it in the oven - which is as hot as possible - for maybe 15 minutes. Take it out. Throw the rolled out dough on top. Spread the tomato mix (taking care not to incinerate your fingers), and place the olives (if they aren't mouldy). And there you go. 10-15 minutes later (just keep looking until the crust looks crusty but the tomatoes don't quite look dessicated) a lovely, very healthy, traditional marinara pizza.
Mmmmm.
Ooh. That's a lot of words. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteandy is a bit of a glutton with the olive oil. you might need the 1tsp in the dough, but not the 2 tsps in the tomato for sure. that boy would bathe in olive oil if he could.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Andy! Will give that a try soon, possibly in Flagstaff this weekend. Wonder if I need to make any high-altitude changes. Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing the discrepancy between US and UK points for flour and bread. Wish I lived in the UK for that reason alone. The bread is really the hardest thing for me, too many damn points!