The Best Pizza in Italy

Okay, maybe I'm being a little cocky, but I made homemade pizza today and it was the most delicious I've had so far.

Yesterday I went to a cheese store near the Rialto market. I was given Buffalo Mozzarella, which is mozzarella made from buffalo milk. It is the most delicious cheese I have ever tasted. I'm usually not a mozzarella person, just because it is sort of a bland cheese, but I could probably eat an entire ball of this cheese.

I preheated the oven as hot as I could (250 degrees Celsius) and waited about an hour for it to heat up. (I miss my convection oven). I kept a cookie sheet in the oven while it was preheating and sprinkled some bread crumbs (I didn't have any corn meal) on a piece of parchment paper.

 Making pizza dough seems pretty simple, but finding the right ratio of flour to dough to prevent a sticky mess proved out to be harder than I thought. I didn't even attempt to try to throw the dough above my head.
Now my pizzas weren't really round, but they turned out fine in the end. I ended up adding a lot more flour than the recipe said.
Also, it helped the dough rise to place the dough bowl in a bowl of warm water. My dough grew more in about 10 minutes than it did in 1 hour sitting on the counter.


I decided to make two pizzas. The first one with a garlic, rosemary and olive oil base with mushrooms and asiago and mozzarella cheeses. The second I made with a pesto base, spinach, mozzarella and sundried tomatoes. I put garlic olive oil on the crusts of both. I probably could have cooked the pizzas for longer but I like my crust thick and soft.

 

I like cold pizza, so I left it to sit while I went on a run. When I got back I took a quarter of each. The garlic mushroom was my favorite although both were good. The touch of rosemary in the crust and crunchy asiago were perfect.

Anna and Lizzy make Monday Night Dinner

My roommate Anna and I had the 2nd Monday Night Family Dinner. We decided to go for the Breakfast for Dinner. For me, breakfast food is my favorite and having Sunday brunch after church is tradition. I've been disappointed so far with the "pastry and coffee" for breakfast here in Italy. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, and although I love my pastries, eating the amount to fill me up probably is not the best for my health. We had to include some Italian sausage with this meal, and despite popular belief, I can actually cook meat, and those sausages were gone in minutes. I coated them in olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano.

We found these mini frozen potatoes at the big grocery store on the mainland, which I keep calling Pandora or Patagonia, but it's actually called Panorama. They were so cute and saved us the trouble of cutting up potatoes.

For the onions and peppers I marinated them in olive oil, rosemary, oregano, garlic and salt.

Anna made a gluten free cinnamon crumb cake. You couldn't even tell it was gluten free! Actually I never can tell when stuff is gluten free. I guess most people just assume gluten free tastes weird. The ovens here are super weird and take forever to cook, but both of our cakes still tasted good, but were a little dense from falling.

I made a non-gluten free lemon blueberry cake. Here's my recipe for it! Who knew finding powdered sugar would be so hard. Also, the baking powder here comes in little packets that look and smell like powdered sugar and so does the vanilla flavoring. So confusing.

We also made mushrooms, spinach and sundried tomatoes and of course scrambled eggs!

Buckwheat pasta with pesto and a veggie burger

I found these buckwheat pasta noodles at a natural food store in Dorsoduro close to Casa Artom. They have a neat darker color and are gluten free! I made a simple pesto with the last bit of my arugula, chopped hazelnuts and basil and added sundried tomatoes, which were a little salty. I also found veggie burger mix at this store made of grains, seasoning and vegetables that you add water to and fry. I added some brie and asiago cheeses Mmmmm.

What's for dinner tonight?

Rosemary glazed carrots (honey, brown sugar, olive oil, fresh rosemary)

 Pasta with garlic, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, basil, Asiago and Parmesan cheeses.