When I told Jack I wanted to make pizza dough by hand instead of using the KitchenAid, he predicted I'd give up after about five minutes of kneading or be sore for days afterward, and neither of those things happened.
Ten minutes of kneading flew by to the rhythm of a couple of favorite songs, and an hour later, a bowl of perfectly risen dough was divided into two balls, zip-bagged, and put into the fridge to proof overnight.
I made a couple of tweaks over the next batches and have reached the point where I'd be proud to serve pizza to just about anybody and just about anytime. Last night as Jack and I devoured a large onion and black olive with a few blobs of whole milk mozzarella and half smoked sausage (his side), he proclaimed that nobody in DeKalb eats better pizza than we do.
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| This one has peppers from Dad's little garden row. |
There are some great kitchens out there on ridges, in hollers, and along all kinds of county roads, but he's likely right, because we do throw out a great pie.
Another thing we've thrown out recently is homemade Canadian bacon, which was super easy and getting done again this weekend!
Step One: Make a brine - Bring curing salt, regular salt, bay leaves, garlic, peppercorns to a boil in three quarts of water.
Step Two: Chill it until it's nice and cold.
Step Three: Marinate a pork tenderloin for 72 hours.
Step Four: Roast the pork until the internal temp is 142 degrees.
Step Five: Slice
That's it, and wow, it was delicious. It was the most tender, tasty "city ham" I may have ever tasted and a completely different critter than the slice of Canadian bacon on an Egg McMuffin, the pieces on a restaurant pizza, or anything from the grocery store. The old adage about how homemade is way better holds true for the brined meat category given our recent experience with corned beef, pastrami, and now Canadian bacon, which is actually Irish bacon because it's roasted instead of smoked, but we aren't splitting that hair in this particular blog post.
We are splitting homemade bagels, though, while we're talking about tasty thing from the kitchen. I started out with a batch of plain ones and have experimented just a bit, making sun dried tomato bagels for Sis after she mentioned how much she liked the ones baked at a particular Memphis bagel shop. The first test batch went to the farm for tasting, and Mom suggested using more pieces of tomato to jazz-up the flavor. Sis reports that the follow-up batch I sent to Franklin earlier this week were A-OK.
I also sent a chocolate cake to Franklin, because not everyone I love who lives there likes sun dried tomato bagels.
