Another Sullivan Street Bakery Pizza Success

Previous entries about Sullivan Street Bakery pizzas include: Zucchini and Pomodoro (picture)

For New Year's Eve I tried the Onion Pizza. It begins with the same dough

Basic Pizza Dough - from My Bread by Jim Lahey, p. 117

enough for 2 13x18 inch pies

500 g bread flour (3.75 c)
10 g instant or other active dry yeast (2.5 t)
5 g table salt (0.75t)
~3g sugar (0.75t + a pinch)
300 g room temperature water (1 1/3 c)

Stir together dry ingredients in a medium bowl
Add water and mix until blended, at least 30 seconds
Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until more than doubled, about 2 hours

Oil 2 13 by 18 inch rimmed baking sheets with olive oil
Use a scraper to remove the dough from the bowl in a single chunk for each pan
Gently pull and stretch the dough across the pan all the way to the edges
makes 1 13 x 18 inch pie, 8 slices

Onion Pizza
650g thinly (like 1/8 inch) sliced yellow onion - you want about 6 cups of slices.
It takes about 2 good-sized onions
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 t table salt
2t fresh thyme (or less of dry)
1/2 recipe basic pizza dough


1. Preheat oven to 500F with a rack in the center
2. Slice the onions very thin. Using a mandoline or food processor makes it easier. 3. In a medium bowl, mix together onions cream and thyme. ** it may not be so authentic, but we thought that this needed a bit more kick -- added generous grinds of black pepper. **
4. Spread onion mixture all over the dough, all the way to the edges. Put a bit extra on the edges as the outside tends to cook and brown more quickly. Sprinkle evenly with bread crumbs.
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the topping is starting to turn golden brown and the crust is pulling away from the sides of the pan. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Dips! Part 3 - Creamy Spinach Dip

Previous entries in this series include Tomato Pesto; Roasted Garlic and Olive; and Creamy Smoked Salmon

I have mentioned before how we like dips, especially for dinner with fresh bread.

On New Year's Eve we had an appetizer dinner, and it included Creamy Spinach Dip.

Here's how to do it:

Fresh spinach method:
Clean and rough chop about 1 pound of fresh spinach
In a largeish (needs to be big enough for cooking the spinach) pan, heat up about 1-2T of olive oil. When it is hot, add about 2-3 cloves minced garlic and 1t-1T red pepper flakes depending on how hot you like it. At this point you can also cook up some minced onion in the oil, but that is not required. Turn the heat down a bit so that the garlic doesn't burn. Cook the spinach until wilted and most of the water has boiled off. Add a good pinch of salt when you add the spinach to counter the bitterness of the greens and help get out the water. When the spinach is cooked, turn off the heat. Now proceed to *

Frozen spinach method:
Defrost and dewater a package of frozen chopped spinach. In a skillet or saucepan, cook the garlic, optional onion, and red pepper flakes in olive oil.

* Next step for either method: In a microwave safe bowl, unwrap two 8 ounce bricks of cream cheese (1/3 less fat=ok, but fat free freaks me out). Microwave gently to soften. Add the spinach and garlic oil mixtures. Microwave to heat and stir to combine.

Serve warm. Leftovers are GREAT on bagels or toast for breakfast, too.

Dips! Part 2 - Formerly Dried Tomato Pesto

We had some friends over for dinner last night, and I made some nice appetizers.

You may recall last summer when our dehydrator was going non-stop for weeks, primarily drying our huge crop of small tomatoes. We dried some plain and others with a spice mixture. These tomatoes became our 2nd dip last night.

Formerly Dried Tomato Pesto

Rehydrate 2:1 mixture of spiced and plain tomatoes in as little boiling water as possible for about 30 min. Strain out the water using a fine mesh and put the now softened tomatoes into the work bowl of a food processor. Add some olive oil for lubrication and pulse away. Thanks to the spices added last August, nothing else is needed.

We ate this on bread and crackers, but it could also be used for pasta. Pesto just means 'paste'. It doesn't have to mean basil. Tonight we plan to put some of this on fries.

Dips! Part 1 - Roasted Garlic and Olive Tapenade

The "Manager's Special" section in the cold case at Smith's has included some really great bargains lately. For example, last week I got a container of pitted mixed Greek olives for about $2. They weren't even that close to the expiration date. I expect that instead they are discontinued products. Anyway, rather than let Z eat them all I made a roasted garlic and olive tapenade and we ate it on no-knead crusty bread.

Roasted Garlic and Olive Tapenade
1. Roast a head of garlic (if you are doing 1 you might as well do 2 and refrigerate for later. This is a good thing to think about doing anytime your oven is on for another purpose as long as the other purpose will not be wrecked by the lovely odor of roasting garlic. For example, I did not do this while baking a mocha cheesecake yesterday, but I would while baking potatoes.)
1a. Here's how you roast garlic. Take an entire bulb. Remove the outer papery stuff, but keep the bulb intact. Slice off the tops of the cloves so that you can see the garlic inside the individual paper sleeves. Place on a piece of Al foil and drizzle on some olive oil (keeps it moist). Wrap up the foil into a packet. Place on the rack in your oven at about 300+F for at least 30 min or until you remember to take it out. Temperature and time can be variable depending on what other thing you are cooking.
2. Squeeze out the roasted garlic cloves, as many as you like - I use at least 1 bulb, from their individual papers just like you should squeeze toothpaste from a tube - bottom up - into a food processor or onto a cutting board/mat. Traditionalists would use a mortar and pestle, but mine is way to small for a task like tapenade.
3. Drain about 8 ounces of pitted olives and add to the food processor work bowl or cutting board. Either process to a coarse paste or chop away to a coarse paste. No need to add salt, but a little crushed red pepper gives some nice heat to it.
4. Chill for at least an hour if you can wait that long to let the flavors meld a bit and serve on bread or crackers.

I also made a yummy dip this weekend

Combined about half a can of smoked salmon (not nice enough for eating straight, but a good value) with about half a brick of cream cheese, generous amounts of dill, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and a few grinds of black pepper. Microwaved until warm and a nice texture and served on pumpernickel bagels.

We really like dip in our house. It was also good on Rye Triscuits (now trans-fat free) and even celery, but fair warning if you let it get cold again it is too hard to be a dip anymore and will break your crackers if you try to dip rather than spread.