MORE DOUGH: STUFFED PIZZA

We were recently invited to a birthday "pie party", where the host asked us specifically to bring an "Italian dish with sausages". The request put me in a tough spot: Although sausages are a specialty of the Veneto region where I'm from, it is hard to find them in a dish that you can bring pre-cooked to a buffet-style dinner. Sausages in Veneto—peppery and coarsely ground, with no fennel seeds or other spices—are mostly grilled on the spot and served with polenta.

As I started thinking about a dish that would be appropriate for the occasion, I remembered the pizza dough from The Italian Store in the freezer, calling me hauntingly like Poe's tell-tale heart. I also remembered a recipe for "Escarole-Stuffed Pizza" in an old issue of Gourmet Magazine that sounded pretty fantastic. I knew what to do: a stuffed pizza with sausages, Swiss chard, and mozzarella.

The only problem was, I'm still completely terrible at stretching dough. I'm too clumsy and impatient, and I always pierce several holes in any dough (or fabric, actually) that passes through my nervous hands. (Upon close inspection, you will notice that my pies are just a perplexing puzzle of broken pieces haphazardly thumbed together.) I needed help, and my very helpful and patient husband was happy to do the stretching with the lovely but fundamentally useless assistance of MiniBee, our oldest son. So I stood on the side and took the pictures, and begged my husband to write a little how-to for you coordinated and smart readers. (You'll find it below; keep on reading.)

The pizza is fairly easy to make once you have mastered the dough-stretching part: It is simply a pie filled with sausages and Swiss chard, to be eaten warm (or any temperature, really) in slices. The only trick I learned from the Gourmet recipe is cooking the crust first in the oven so that it does not get too soggy once you add the stuffing. The final pizza is soft, chewy, and perfectly salty. The sausages add a decadent joy to this recipe, but pizza is so versatile, you can really stuff it with anything you like. Although pardon me for repeating myself: NO PINEAPPLE AND NO CHICKEN. Don't make me come there with my perforating fingers and Poesque delusions.

STUFFED PIZZA

3 sweet Italian sausages (about 1/2 lb)
1 crushed garlic clove
1/2 bunch Swiss Chard, chopped
1 C cubed mozzarella (drained for 10 minutes)
2 tbsp EVOO
Kosher salt 
pepper
flour
1 pizza dough at room temperature (only best-quality dough—DC people, you can only use Vace or The Italian Store or make your own)


MAKE THE STUFFING

• Heat the oven to 500 degrees and put a large pot of salted water to boil.
• Blanch the Swiss chard in water for 2 minutes, then strain it and dump in ice water. Dry with paper towels.
• Squeeze out the meat from the sausages' casing. If you don't love doing this like I do, find someone who will.
• Cook the sausage meat, breaking up large lumps with a wooden spoon, in a large skillet for 8 minutes or until browned and cooked through. Transfer a large mixing bowl.
• Cook the crushed garlic in the rendered fat for 2 minutes. Discard.
• Add the Swiss chard to the skillet and cook for about 4 minutes. 
• Mix the Swiss chard with the sausage, let cool for for a few minutes, and then add the cubed mozzarella.
• Sprinkle with one tablespoon of EVOO and salt and pepper to taste.

MAKE THE PIZZA

• Cut 1/3 of the pizza dough and stretch on a floured surface to a 9'' diameter.
• Place the dough in the cake pan, sprinkle with EVOO, and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the dough is golden. Let cool for 10 minutes or until you can touch dough and pan with your bare hands without risk of erasing your fingerprints.
• Spoon the filling on the crust, keeping it about one inch away from the border.
• Stretch the rest of the dough to a 10'' diameter. Place the dough it over the pizza and carefully fold it underneath for about an inch. Press edges so that the stuffing is perfectly enclosed.
• Brush the top of the stuffed pizza with olive oil and sprinkle with additional salt.
• Cook in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until your pizza looks like the one in the picture above.

HOW TO STRETCH PIZZA DOUGH

Whether you have been a show-off and made your own pizza dough or simply bought it from your local pizzaiolo, you'll still need to transform that sticky ball of goodness into a soft, elastic, and impossibly thin disc. The first thing is, the dough should be room temperature. Too cold and you will actually feel it resisting your touch (insert joke here). Then, you should have plenty of flour on your working surface. Once you're ready, plop the dough on the flour and dust it liberally. Do not to fold the dough over onto itself: The time for kneading has passed, and all you would be making is a really crappy croissant. Instead, flatten the dough with your fingers, pushing it outward from the center, and flip it often in the flour. Soon the dough will begin to soften, and at that point you can start to stretch it—literally, pick up the flattened dough, hold it in front of you, and pull at it gently while turning it like a steering wheel. Eventually the dough's own weight will be enough to continue stretching it (that's why those guys flip it in the air!). You really want to make the dough almost paper thin, but without creating any holes. There are other tricks to making non-compliant dough more elastic, including dousing with olive oil, but really—flour is your best friend. —Alec

Find the original recipe from Gourmet here: Escarole-Stuffed Pizza.

FUCK LOVE: BAKING WITH ANGER

I've had a couple of rough weeks. My preschooler is livelier than ever, the baby refuses to nap, and my PMS returned after a one and half year reprieve. My mood could best be pictured by a flock of rabid harpies flying straight out of Dante's Inferno. Luckily I remembered my motto, written in magnetic letters on my old dishwasher:

I do believe that cooking, and especially baking, has a therapeutic effect. But I'm not talking about the serene yoga-bliss advertised by slender crafters and macaroon-enthusiasts with lovely wavy locks on Pinterest (not that I'm judging). My baking therapy is an emergency intervention to save me and my family from an imminent, cataclysmic nervous breakdown. 

I'm not sure how this works, exactly, but I know that as I prep the dough, my anger dissipates. It might be that I get an outlet from the ultra speed and strength I apply to mixing the ingredients while rabidly biting on a kitchen towel. More effective than punching a wall or screaming in my nursing pillow: Baking gives my anger a worthy purpose and a crowd-pleasing result. Baking with Anger also brings an unexpected bonus. When you're angry, you tend to be less precise, often adding more of the ingredients you need. Your shaky, frenzied hands will sprinkle too much salt, chop too many olives, melt too much butter, and add way too much baking powder. (I made some furious pancakes that looked like country loaves once. They were amazing.)

A savory muffin filled with hate.

So yesterday, when I was on the brink of explosion, I decided to make muffins. Just announcing the intention of making muffins is a great start towards mental healing: Kids are immediately made happy and, more importantly, SILENT by the idea that they are soon going to have their favorite treat. 

I used this recipe for "savoury muffins" from Grab Your Spork, which calls for olives, spinach, dried tomatoes, and feta (the last thing you need in these dire times is to shove sugar-based muffins in your preschooler's mouth). I didn't have all the required ingredients, so I ended up with olive tapenade, chopped leftover kale, grated Parmigiano, and turmeric, because now I basically add it to everything. The muffins turned out great: super-flavorful, soft, and moist. My son ate 6 of them in 24 hours, which is not completely surprising since he has his parents' appetite, but still.

Notice the hand of a happy child.

CHICKPEA BREAD (NO BREAD MACHINE)

As promised, here is a very easy and extremely rewarding recipe for chickpea bread for total bread-making newbies (like me). First of all, let me explain why I decided to make bread at home when I can easily buy it anywhere I want. I have a confession to make: We have recently become a sugar-free family. I say it with quite a bit of shame, because I really didn't want to join in this generation's most annoying quirk of eliminating one food group from its diet. Oh well.

It all started a few months ago when my husband and I decided to join 3 other million viewers and watch "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", the lecture in which UCSF endocrinologist Robert Lustig very convincingly explains why sugar, in the form of fructose, is pure evil. I soon went through my already HFCS-free pantry, and eliminated (= threw away or swallowed whole) all products containing sugar.* Of course, we realized we needed to find a type of bread without sugar. For sliced bread, we are now spending ridiculous amounts of money on Ezekiel sprouted bread, so I decided to research an easy bread recipe to bake a sugar-free loaf at home.

I started researching Italian blogs because, as far as I know, sugar isn't yet an ingredient in our everyday bread. I found this very simple recipe from ButtaLaPasta that not only does not require a bread machine, but it also allows you to use store-bought yeast rather than homemade starter yeast.** I know expert bakers will scoff at this, but I'm just learning. Just like I would not pick Lady D.'s wedding dress as my first sewing project, I will not choose a French baguette as my first bread-making experiment.

Anyway, here is the recipe. I kept the ingredients and rising times from the Italian blog, but then used the Dutch-oven baking method popularized by Mark Bittman and brilliantly explained by Patrick Lynch on his website (here). I hope you like it.

CHICKPEA BREAD

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
8oz cooked chickpeas (a small can will do)
1 packet active dry yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
lukewarm water

• Activate the yeast in 1/4 cup lukewarm water for 15 minutes.
• Mash the chickpeas with a fork.
• Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients, kneading and adding lukewarm water until the dough comes into a ball and it is a little sticky and not too hard. If you're using a stand mixer, this should take a couple of minutes.
• Place dough into a large bowl, cover with a towel, and let it rise for 3 hours away from drafts.
• Knead the dough again for a couple of minutes (the dough will deflate), cut a cross on top of it, and place it on oiled parchment paper and then inside a large bowl. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
• Forty minutes before the end of the final rise, turn on the oven to 425F and place a large Dutch oven, with cover, inside.
• At the end of the 40 minutes, carefully place the dough inside the Dutch oven with the parchment paper. Bake for 15 minutes with the pot cover on, and then for 20-30 minutes without, until the crust is nicely browned.
• Take bread out of the pan and let cool on a rack for about 30 minutes.

I made this bread a few times now, and I've been very happy with it. It is very quick to make, although you have to plan around rising and baking times. The result is a very soft, moist bread, and the Dutch-oven method gives it a crispy crust that I've never obtained by cooking bread in a regular oven. The chickpeas contribute a slight sweetness and add a good amount of fiber for what would otherwise be just white bread. One loaf lasts us two days, because really we are never happy with only one slice.

Let me know if you try it and if you have some suggestions. As I said before, I know nothing about bread making, so kneading times and techniques have all been improvised. 

*With the exception of a chocolate salami purchased in Venice during my latest vacation. Yes, chocolate salami. It's a chocolate dessert that looks like a salami, and it's every Italian child's favorite thing in life. See one here.
**In Italy especially, there's a very powerful cult of bakers who create and feed their baking yeast at home. They call it Mother Yeast, and that's all I have to say.