An easy quick meal after a road trip!
Pizza made from scratch, easy? Pizza is a quick easy meal if the dough was made ahead of time! I made enough pizza dough for two pizzas a couple days ago. When a yeast dough is refrigerated, it slows the yeast activity. A cold dough is stiff textured, but as soon as it warms up, the yeast becomes active again and the dough becomes easy to work. When working a dough that has been refrigerated, it is best to use a gentle touch. The first time that I made a pizza with a cold dough was in an Italian family style restaurant. I thought that the dough had to be worked with more force, because it was stiff. The owner of the restaurant said "What are you trying to do? Kill the dough or something?" There is truth in what he said. Working a cold dough with too much force will knock the life out of the dough. Yeast is a living organism and it does react to too much force by becoming inactive. When a gentle touch is used on cold dough, it takes longer to shape the dough. The extra time allows the fingertips to warm the dough. As the cold dough is gently and slowly patted out with fingertips, you can literally feel the yeast becoming active. The dough starts to feel spongy with each touch. As the yeast starts producing gas again, the dough becomes very easy to work and it becomes elastic. A refrigerated dough can only keep for so long. A few days is okay. After 3 or 4 days, the pizza dough will start to smell like sourdough. Early sourdough stage is okay for making pizza. If a strong sourdough odor is present, then it may be best to use the soured dough as a sourdough bread starter. A good sourdough bread starter is a prized item! Instead of using yeast to start a batch of dough, a wet old sourdough starter is used. It takes time for the sourdough yeast to take to the new fresh bread dough ingredients, but the sourdough flavor will spread into the fresh ingredients. Fresh yeast reacts a little quicker. Sourdough takes its own time. Once a new batch of dough is made with a sourdough starter, always pull a small amount of dough off and save it for starting a future batch of sourdough. In europe and San Francisco, sourdough starters have been continuously rejuvenated for many years. There are some european bakeries that have kept a prized sourdough starter active for more than 500 years! Sourdough is a living tradition. The moral of the story? If you end up letting a pizza dough set in a cooler for too long and it smells like a strong sourdough, then use it for making sourdough bread, instead of discarding the old dough! I just figured that this information may come in handy for those who have minimal bread making experience.
Death Valley Junction is literally a living ghost town. This town is located close to the Nevada - California border in the vast Amargosa Valley. Only the Amargosa Hotel and Cafe remains as an open business. This town used to be railroad stop for loading locally mined borax. Death Valley Junction used to be called Amargosa, which is the Paiute word for bitter water. Most of the water in this region has a high PH reading and a high alkaloid content. The water has a bitter flavor. Only a few abandoned old buildings remain from the old Amargosa days. Most of the buildings that dot the landscape are nothing but walls and foundations. There is no gas station in Amargosa, so fuel up before taking the tour. The next gas station heading west is in Furnace Creek Death Valley. The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe calls this region home. They have lived in Death Valley and the surrounding areas for a very long time. There is a strong effort and good support for the Timbisha Shoshone to aquire the old Death Valley Junction and surrounding areas for establishing a memorial for those who were lost during the easterner's settling of the west. It is difficult for modern city folk to imagine how anyone could survive in the Amargosa Valley and Death Valley. If you wish to learn the old ways of living good in a harsh environment and not just surviving, then learn about the ways of the Timbisha Shoshone.
Pizza Dough Recipe: If you have dough making experience, then this will be easy. High gluten flour is best for this recipe, but bread flour can be used. Pizza dough is focaccia dough or Italian bagette style bread dough. No oil in the mixture will produce a dough that is like many Italian breads that are not enriched with fat or French baguette bread dough. Many pizzeria chefs do not add oil to a pizza dough and that is correct pizza dough too. Focaccia style doughs require enrichment with fat. Olive oil is a fat! Oil strengthens and elongates the gluten strands of the dough. It only takes a very small amount of oil to produce a nice texture. The elastic gluten strands give pizza dough the ability to be stretched and tossed in the air! Add 2 tablespoon of fresh yeast or 1 tablespoon of dry yeast to 16 ounces of tepid luke warm water in a mixing bowl. Place the mixing bowl in a luke warm place like on top of a warm oven. When the yeast activates, add 2 teaspoons of sugar to proof the yeast. Add about 2 cups of flour. Add 2 teaspoons of sea salt. Add 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil. Stir the mixture with a spoon, till a very loose wet dough is formed. Start adding a little bit of flour at a time,while stirring, till a loose dough is formed. Add a little more flour at a time, while mixing with your fingers, till the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. You will be able to feel when the dough is starting to get elastic. It will stick to your hands when made correctly, but that will change after rising twice. Add flour, while hand mixing, till the dough can pull away from the sides of the bowl. Cover the dough in the mixing bowl with a dry towel. Set the bowl on top of an oven in a luke warm area, with a second towel underneath the bowl to protect the dough from too much heat. When the dough rises more than double, beat it down with your knuckles and gather the dough like a ball in the bowl. Cover the dough with a towel and let it rise again. When it rises the second time, beat the dough down and knead firmly with your hands for 1 minute. Place the dough on a floured counter top. Roll the dough into a large ball. Cut the dough ball in half for two medium size pizzas portions or into four portions for mini pizzas. Roll and tuck each dough portion with with your hands to make smooth dough balls. You can cover and refrigerate each dough ball for a few days or freeze the dough portions for later use.
Sweet Longaniza Sausage: Roast 6 ounces of Filipino style sweet longaniza sausage in a 350 degree oven, till it becomes fully cooked. Allow the sausage to cool. Cut the sausage into thin slices and set them aside.
Pizza Sauce: I make several different Italian pizza sauces. Some are suited for particular pizzas. This pizza sauce is like a standard pizza sauce recipe. Place 1 1/2 cups of imported Italian canned crushed tomatoes into a mixing bowl. Add 2 ounces of olive oil. Add 3 cloves of minced garlic. Add 2 pinches of oregano. Add sea salt and black pepper. Stir the pizza sauce ingredients together. (Do not heat or cook a pizza sauce! Classic Italian pizza sauce is a cold mixture. It only is cooked in the oven!)
Gorgonzola, Sweet Longaniza, Green Onion Pizza and Death Valley Junction, California! Coat a smooth countertop with a very thin film of olive oil. (Just a few drops of olive oil wiped on the counter is plenty!) Place a mini pizza size 12" to 14" portion of the dough on the counter top. Use your fingertips to press and stretch the dough flat. Use your finger tips to gently press the dough outward from the center to form a flat rustic pizza dough shape that is less than 1/2" thick. Place the flat pizza dough on a pizza pan that is lightly brushed with olive oil. (Re-stretch the dough if necessary.) Brush the dough lightly with olive oil. Spread an even layer of the pizza sauce over the pizza dough, but leave a 1/2" bare crust. Crumble thin slices of gorgonzola cheese over the pizza. (about 4 to 6 ounces) Arrange the sliced longaniza on the pizza. Sprinkle 2 sliced green onions over the pizza. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the pizza. Sprinkle 1 pinch of oregano over the pizza. Bake the pizza in a 450 degree oven, till the crust turns a golden color and till the toppings become fully cooked. (Do not attempt to brown gorgonzola cheese! Gorgonzola will become a very bitter flavor if it is browned. Just bake till the gorgonzola becomes thoroughly melted.) Allow the pizza to cool for 30 seconds before slicing into pie shaped slices.
Gourmet pizza! Better still, a fresh baked home made gourmet pizza quickly assembled with pre-made refrigerated dough after a long day of touring the Nevada-California Mojave desert! Yum! Ciao Baby! ... Shawna
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