Pizza with Eggplant, Peppers and Mushroom (Sunday, April 3, 2011)

It's been awhile.  I haven't stopped cooking but I've been too busy (when I say busy I mean lazy) to write about any of it.  I've been making lots of homemade breads lately.  I recently bought a book called "Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day."  The premise of the book is to make a dough from their "master" recipe and then refrigerate it for up to 14 days.  As it ages is becomes more sourdough-like.  So today, I used the master dough to make a pizza.  I rolled and stretched a grapefruit-sized ball of dough and put it on a cornmeal coated pizza peel.  Meanwhile my oven was heating to 500, the highest it goes.  I also have a pizza stone in the oven that I use for breads, and now, pizza, finally.  I spread on some of my own marinara sauce (see earlier recipe).  I sliced some Chinese eggplant, yellow bell pepper, Anaheim pepper, Baby Bella mushrooms and tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper.  Veggies, meet pizza.  To top it off, some freshly grated mozzarella.  The pizza slid easily off the peel onto the baking stone for about 9-10 minutes, barely enough time to pour and taste my beer.  I topped it off with a Chiffonade of basil and some Parmesan cheese.  Bella! I've been meaning to start making pizzas and flatbreads.  This is a thing that you can make with endless variety and as summer veggies become abundant it will be an easy go to, especially since I'll have bread dough on hand all the time.  To go with it, I had a Sierra Nevada Glissade which I really enjoyed on a warm spring day like today.  I'll leave the discussion of beer to the beer bloggers (ahem!  Willie, ahem!).

I have some backlogged meals to write about in the coming days, including the Family Recipe Beef Stroganoff, Pistachio-Roasted Purple Potatoes, Mixed-Berry Sorbet and a quick and easy fresh pasta dish (including discussion of my new favorite kitchen toy).