During Friday’s (August 7) gravel race, thoughts of the next day wisped through my mind; Sharker’s b-day celebration! Upon returning after race, I jumped into making 6 pizza doughs, 1.5 pounds of past dough, and 2 sourdough bread doughs. Flour and dough were all over the place! All this was in preparation for “Lil Spicy’s” birthday. These were her request! Ah, mia bambina!
Who’s “Lil Spicy?” That’s my new nickname for our daughter! I gave this nickname to her a few weeks ago after she decided not to share my pizzas with her roommates!
I’d been lobbying C to call Lil Spicy, Michaela or Michelle. “Why not name my daughter after me? Why mess with what works!?” I’d sheepishly argue, “and, if not, how about Antoinette?” I still believe that C thinks I was serious!
Lil Spicy has had various nicknames through the years. We’ve primarily called her “JJ.” But, her first nickname came around before her birth.
In any event, our son was a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan at the time. He suggested “Sharker!” That stuck!
For 12 years of soccer games, though her final college game, I wore socks with sharks on them. I have 4 pair. I could wear them on the bike, but I have special plans; wedding, births, and the like!
The Pizza – GPS #17, 4 Homemades #17 to #22
As I mentioned above, I made 6 pizza doughs. These were for the Great Pizza Search (GPS) #17. It was actually my normal dough recipe, but because my dough is rising so well, instead of cutting the dough into 4, I cut the dough into 6 smaller dough balls that went into containers in the refrigerator overnight.
By morning, the dough hadn’t risen as in the past, but after only a couple of hours of warmth, they had doubled in size and were full of air. The dough was ready!
I made my “standard” Aunt Theresa sauce, and used my standard mix of moozedell (not buffalo, but low moisture) and parmagian, and topped with salame on a few and just fresh basil on the other.
The big change!? I cooked them on our new cast iron pizza steel on the GRILL! I was surprised at how hot the grill became, over 600F! The pizza steel must have been even hotter than that.
In the oven, with a max of 550F, it takes between 6 – 8 minutes for my pizzas to cook.
My 1st try (Homemade 17) on the grill (with the grill cover in place) resulted in a burnt pizza in less than 5 minutes. To make matters worse, the burnt chars stayed grounded in the stone for the remaining 5 pizzas 😦
Each pizza from 2 – 6 (Homemades 18 – 22) got progressively shorter on the steel. By pizza 6, I only cooked the pizza for 1.5 minutes! It was incredible except for a little char from the steel from the initial try! It was a great pizza, but unfortunately, the char moved the first few down to MEH 😦 and the final few down to simply good.
The most “great” thing about the cast iron pizza steel and grill? It truly approached a Neapolitan type of oven. It was incredibly hot and cooked the pizzas nearly instantly like in Napoli causing the pizzas to puff to perfection and allow them to be very thin and light! And, the kitchen doesn’t get so extremely hot in the summer. Can’t wait to try again!
The Past – GPa #3, Homemades Fettuccine with Summer Sauce!
I also made 1.5 pounds of past dough for the Great Pasta Search (GPA) #3.
In what seems to be my current theme….I bought some more equipment. A pizza roller and cutter attachment for our KitchenAid stand mixer.
My parents hand crank machine caused some damage to our countertop. It is cheaper to buy the tool for the KitchenAid than the cost for additional repairs to our granite.
Let me tell you…the KitchenAid past attachment is incredible! We made 1.5 pounds of homemade fettuccine in about 10 minutes. It might have taken an hour or more with the hand crank and hand cut method.
As for a sauce, I didn’t want to make a “hot” sauce given that it’s summer and was pretty warm. So, I found a great recipe for a very simple “Summer Sauce” on Google. It’s prime ingredient as fresh tomato which are plentiful in our neighborhood as there are 2 large produce stands within walking distance of our house.
Here’s the recipe – https://lidiasitaly.com/recipes/raw-summer-tomato-sauce-pasta/. It is SIMPLE!
The combination of fresh homemade past with a fresh Summer Sauce, incredible! I don’t recall having a sauce like this as a kid, but it will be a go to for me until we can’t find fresh local tomatoes later into autumn.
GPA #3 – GREAT!
We nearly went through 6 pizzas, 1.5 pounds of past and sauce, fruit, and cupcakes!
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