Hungry Travels

Making pizza from scratch takes a serious time commitment: you’ve got to make the dough and let it proof, make the sauce, prep the toppings, roll out the dough, assemble the pie and finally, bake the darn thing in the oven.  Not an activity for every day, but fun to do when you’re feeling ambitious.

On this night I set out to replicate All’ Antica’s Contadina pizza I’d raved about a few weeks ago, having found a Bon Appétit recipe that looked awfully close.   First step was making the dough and letting it proof for over an hour until it doubled in size.

I also decided to make a second pizza topped with artichokes, spinach, red onion and peppers; for the sauce, sauteed onions and canned plum tomatoes.

Meanwhile, I sliced two Yukon gold potatoes and lightly sauteed them until soft.

Here’s the key to the recipe: the herbs.  In the Magic Bullet I ground up rosemary, sage, garlic and a pinch of salt.  Since I didn’t have prosciutto I cut up pieces of Canadian bacon.

No matter hard I try, I can’t figure out how to stretch the dough by hand and toss it like you see on tv (does anyone know how to do it?).  It always gets too thin in the center and rips.

Anyhow, here’s how the two pizzas looked before they went into the oven.  On the potato pizza were the slices of potato followed by the herbs, Canadian bacon, a sprinkling of mozzarella and a generous grating of Parmesan.

500 degrees for around 18 minutes until the edges of the crust were crisp and blackened.

You can’t beat prosciutto, but I’ve gotta say, the Canadian bacon made a fine substitute.  And the herbs rocked — along with the soft potatoes, they really made the pie.  When I do this again, I’ll drizzle olive oil over the top at the last minute.

That’s all there is to it — a Contadina imitation you can make at home!