quick fresh pizza
After watching this CHOW OBSESSIVES on pizza, I really wanted to make homemade pizza from scratch. We have plenty of basil in the garden and are always hacking it down to make pesto. We picked up some buffalo mozzarella ($8) and heirloom tomatoes ($2) from the Hollywood Farmers’ market. I really wanted to make my own pizza dough, but time was running out and I ended up buying some from the prepared foods guy at Whole Foods ($4) and froze it as soon as I got home.
Of course, I didn’t get it out of the freezer to thaw three hours in advance, so I found a nifty quick way to do it. Get a gallon ziploc bag and spray the inside with cooking spray, then toss the lump of frozen dough in and seal tightly. Then fill your sink or a large bowl with hot water from the tap and let the bag sit in it. I came back to mine about an hour & a half later to find it completely thawed. :-)
The spouse rolled out the dough, and we spread down some olive oil with crushed garlic, then the basil and tomatoes and the mozzarella last. A light sprinkle of sea salt and into the oven it went. In hindsight, I figure we could have rolled out the pizza a bit more thinly, and also maybe put the mozzarella down first. Perhaps a super-thin layer of tomato sauce would have been nice, too. But the end result was fabulous anyway.
