My love affair with pizza threatens to consume me. I've been thinking about SK's Shaved Asparagus Pizza since it magically appeared before me several weeks ago. I'd even managed to print it out for my to do stack (which is by the way becoming a bit unwieldy).
The only thing I needed was asparagus. Check.
I also had her recipe for Simple Pizza Dough and decided to try it as it made up a smaller batch than the one I used last week from the big Italian book. Slight differences besides the proportions was no sugar was called for, something I recall seeing in all recipes involving yeast and the addition of olive oil.
I bought a new type of yeast, feeling all inspired I got a pound bag from Smart and Final...no more amateurish pre-measured packets for me thank you. Once opened, I put it in a mason jar and it's been in the refrigerator.
I mixed up the dough in the food processor and let it to rise in the dutch oven in the oven. An hour later it didn't seem to have risen much at all. Where did this all go wrong? It was getting very late and my shaved asparagus was sitting there marinating in olive oil, salt an pepper begging to just be eaten like a salad...being perfectly delish all on its own.
She does call this a thin crust pizza and as per the recipe I used a scant amount compared to last weeks dough...check the yeast package, was I right to refrigerate it? Did I kill it? No...refigeration was recommended for optimum results.
I take the dough out of the dutch oven and deflate what little rise it took and as per instructions it goes into a greased bowl for another 20 minutes covered in plastic wrap. In the meantime I make another batch of dough using the old recipe but it comes out much dryer than it did last week.
My confidence is waning and it's closing in on 11p.m. and I've still not eaten. 20 minutes later with two doughs on the (fingers crossed) rise...wait it appears that my first batch has noticably risen, it's light and airy and ready to roll. I pile on the cheese and I mean pile...a half a pound of mozzarella and a quarter cup of parmesean goes on top of this little disc of dough. Though I hesitated after dumping half that amount on top I just kept going...no longer doubting SK's word, the asparagus shavings get lovingly spread over the cheese and into the very, very hot oven 500 degrees hot and timer set for 15 minutes. Those exact minutes later the most gorgeous pizza emerges from my oven. I can not wait to dive into this one. Lo and behold another perfect Little Kitchen production.
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