Saturday 5 September 2009

Deep Dish Semolina Pizza

One of my favorite pizza recipes to make in a pinch is a no knead deep dish pizza from King Arthur Flour. The dough is made with a mixture of all-purpose and semolina flour. It's easy and tastes great!
 
I just joined the bakers in the BYOB (Bake Your Own Bread) bread wagon which means I’ll be baking my own bread for the rest of 2009 (and beyond).
 
In light of this new challenge, I decided to be creative with the pizza dough. I had some Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes Italian Semolina Bread dough that I didn't want to use for bread so I decided to use it for pizza dough.
 
Here is my version of a no knead deep dish pizza topped with pepperoni.
 
No Knead Deep Dish Italian Semolina Pizza
Makes: Two 9 x 13-inch pan pizzas
 
 
If you have some of the Artisan Semolina Bread Dough, use that as the base for this pizza.
 
The KAF recipe uses 1/2 cup of semolina flour and 2 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour. The semolina dough was 50/50 all-purpose/semolina flour, and there was enough dough for 2 loaves, so this meant I needed to adjust the dough a little bit to get the right consistency and flavor.
 
To make the pizza dough, I mixed 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon of yeast, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 1 tablespoon of KAF pizza dough flavor in a large bowl.  To that, I added about a 3/4 cup of water. The semolina dough was already wet so I didn't use the full 1-1/4 cups of lukewarm water that the original recipe calls for. I also didn't add any additional salt because the semolina bread dough was pretty salty (um...I added too much salt when I made the dough, but you won't tell, right?)  Then I added the semolina dough to the flour mixture and stirred it up really well. I had to use wet hands on this one to get everything incorporated. I didn't have to knead it, just mix it real good. The dough was pretty sticky.

I mixed with my wet hands until it formed a sticky soft dough. Then, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and let the sticky soft dough rise in the bowl for 30 minutes.


Then, I placed the dough in the pan and let it rest for about 15 minutes. After the dough is rested, you can pat and stretch it to cover the bottom of the pan. If you use wet fingertips, it works much better. It actually spreads like butter.


Spread the pizza with sauce. I usually make homemade pizza sauce but I was going for extremely easy this weekend so I just used a jar of pizza sauce that I had in the pantry. I would say that my sons wouldn't know the difference but they actually do ... guess that's a good thing.

Bake it in a preheated 450 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Remove it from the oven, and add the seasoning, cheese, and toppings. I added Italian seasoning and basil along with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. Like I said, I made this real simple.
 


Return it to the oven and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the cheese is bubbly and the edges are golden brown.

Let it cool a little bit before serving. That is, if you can.  I made one pizza Saturday night and put the other pan in the refrigerator overnight to make the next day. After I finished baking the pizza on Saturday, I went to visit a friend for awhile. While I was gone, My oldest son and his friend demolished the pizza pictured below. It's a good thing I had two pizzas. With a sheepish grin, he said they thoroughly enjoyed it. Although, he said the bottom was a little too brown.


The next day, I baked the other pizza in the glass pan and lowered the temperature to 400 degrees. It came out great and tasted wonderful! Not too brown...just right! Needless to say this one (pictured below) didn't last very long either.

 

I was so pleased because not only did my experiment work but it tasted great! Here's to experiments that work!
 
 
You might enjoy some of these other Homemade Pizza Recipes.

Happy Baking!
Cathy

No comments:

Post a Comment