Welcome back for another round of the Bachelor Pad Gourmet, the column where every recipe is an adventure story, and the ingredient list comes at the end. Remember, if you’re in a hurry, skim the bold parts. On to today’s recipe.
Shockingly Quick Mini-Pizza
As I may have mentioned, I’m just starting classes at seminary for the first time, and it turns out that doesn’t leave you massive amounts of time for delicious gourmet cooking. I really like delicious gourmet cooking, though, so this forces me to be creative. (I also really like pizza, which had its part in this discovery.) I was messing around in the kitchen one day trying to figure out how to make a yummy snack with a little bit of flour, a few pizza-like toppings, and about 30 minutes, when I stumbled on this technique. I ended up liking it so much I’ve made it about three times in the last week or two, with minor variations each time. So this is even more refined than your usual BPG offering. It’s not exactly pizza, but it’s close enough for government work, and you don’t have to bother with rising times and all that. In fact, I think this recipe might be slightly quicker than making a frozen pizza, and for from-scratch, that’s saying something.
First, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. The next bits can pretty easily be done in the time it takes the oven to heat up, which is part of why the time this recipe takes is comparable to cooking a frozen pizza. The prep time is less than it takes to preheat the oven (which you’d do anyway), and once the oven is hot you’re not waiting for a frozen slab of dough to thaw then cook.
You’ll need some flour – the quantity, naturally, depends on how much pizza you want. I’d say rule of thumb is to envision it spread out about a quarter-inch thick, and whatever area that would cover is going to be the approximate size of your pizza after you add the other ingredients. I’ve been using a mix of whole-wheat flour and white all-purpose flour in about a 2-to-1 ratio, because that’s what I had around the house, plus it’s healthier and adds texture. I assume it would be about as good with just white flour, though.
Put the flour in a bowl of some sort, add a pinch or two of salt, and put in a light shake of baking powder (I’m guessing it would be about half a teaspoon per cup or two of flour, but I don’t usually measure.) Then comes the slightly tricky part. Add water, but less than you think you’ll need. From this point on, the baking powder is going to be starting to react and make bubbles, which you want to capture to make your dough rise. (That’s not a difficult thing, it just means you have to make sure not to let it just sit there and fizz, or alternatively mix it so much that you work all the bubbles out of the dough. Move forward with brisk confidence, and you’ll be fine – plus you’ll look that much better doing it, and what’s the point of cooking gourmet if you don’t look good?)
So mix it all up, ideally using as little time and as few strokes as you can. If you put in a small enough amount of water, you’ll probably have some dry flour left over when it’s all been absorbed. If so, put in a tiny bit more water, and keep mixing it until the water is all absorbed. This takes some finesse – you want just barely enough water to get all the flour sucked into the dough, and no more. If you accidentally put in too much, no worries. Just add more flour instead of more water.
The end result should be a small lump of dough that is not sticky in consistency. To get it not too sticky to handle, I always end up having to add a little bit of flour on the outside of the lump and work it in by folding it in half over and over, and adding a little more flour on the outside if it gets sticky again. Grease a baking pan (or use non-stick spray) and spread out your lump of dough on the pan into roughly the shape of a tiny pizza. I suppose if you have a rolling pin and are into that kind of thing, you could use it, but I find flattening it out by hand is entirely sufficient. And kind of fun.
Put on a little bit of pizza (or spaghetti or other tomato) sauce, and any other toppings you want. I didn’t have cheese the last couple times I made this, so I did a sort of pizza marinara with tomato sauce, olive oil, oregano, garlic salt, and onions sliced thin. Also once I cut up some flame-grilled Korean-barbeque-marinated steaks left over from a cookout my roommates and I had, but that’s a whole different story. All I’ll say for now is steak and onion as toppings on a fresh-baked mini-pizza are about as good as it gets. You can use anything at all that sounds good. And remember, if you are trying to impress someone with this, surprising and unusual toppings or combinations are usually a good way to do it (especially if they taste good.) Pizza alfredo? Bleu cheese and pear slices? Leftover Chinese food? Get creative!
By now the oven should be hot, so pop it in and let it cook for…well, until it’s done. Mine have usually taken about 20 minutes, but it probably depends on the size.
Parting tip of the day, scissors work great for cutting pizza. I owe that one to my beautiful mother, who I think learned it at Mommy School.
Ingredients I ended up using:
– Some flour (I mixed whole wheat and white all-purpose. Whole wheat flour on its own probably won’t work very well, but if about one-third or more of the total is white flour, it should come out fine.)
– Salt
– Some water
– Ragu(tm) Original spaghetti sauce
– Toppings (at different times I’ve used herb-infused olive oil (yum!), onions, steak cut in little pieces, cheddar cheese, oregano, garlic powder, etc.)
Substitutions you could use:
Spaghetti sauce:
– Salsa
– BBQ sauce
– Olive oil
– For a delicious dessert pizza, you could try chocolate sauce, Nutella, maple syrup, fruity syrups, etc.
– You get the idea…
Toppings:
– This is a perfect opportunity for creative thinking, innovation, and self-expression. I’m not going to take that away from you. I care too much.
How good this is for you:
Well, this sort of depends on what toppings you end up with. Fresh tomatoes and mozzarella on olive oil? Nutritious and delicious! Donut holes on chocolate sauce? Not so much! The crust will be healthier if you use some whole-grain flour (remember to mix in some white flour to make it work, though!), and unprocessed toppings will tend to be better for you than highly-processed.
Who this will impress:
Well, it’s baking, and it’s from scratch, and it’s pizza, so you’re probably in pretty good shape on this count. Do bear in mind that this may not look like much (so you may have to give away free bites before people realize just how impressive it really is), and the crust isn’t quite the same as regular yeast-based pizza crust, so it may not be to everyone’s taste. And a word of caution regarding toppings: there’s a difference between creative and randomly bizarre, so don’t try too hard here.
Until next time, cook freely!
— Twist
