Rosie Makes A White Pizza!

 
Whenever the Hawthornes want pizza, it's just a few steps away.

We don't order pizza.

We don't pick up pizza.

We don't go out for pizza.

We make our own.

And it's better than anything else!

Today, we wanted a White Sauce Pizza.

And that's just what I made.

First I started on the dough.

Pizza Dough

1 cup warm water
1 package yeast
sprinkling of sugar
2 cups bread flour
1 tsp kosher salt

Pour water into a medium size bowl.  Add yeast and sprinkle about a teaspoon of sugar over the yeast.  Wait for the yeast to "proof."  That means the yeast must "prove" it's alive.  It'll start eating sugars and releasing carbon dioxide and alcohol.  The mixture gets all poofy and foamy.  It's alive!  When you know the yeast is doing its thang, fork in the bread flour and salt.  Form dough into a ball, then knead it for about 5 minutes, adding more flour if necessary to keep it from sticking.  When the dough is in a nice cohesive, elastic ball, place in an oiled bowl, turning to coat, cover, and let rise until doubled.

Turn out dough onto oiled pizza pan and, starting at the middle, press outward, forming into a pie shape.  Press and rest.  Take your time doing this since the dough likes to rest a bit.  Press some more and let it rest.  When you get the size pizza pie you want, let dough rise while you gather the rest of your toppings and make the sauce.

I picked a few peppers from my garden.

Toppings:
sliced mushrooms
spinach
drizzle of black truffle oil
sliced sweet onion and red onion
sliced peppers
sliced black olives
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
Mozzarella cheese, grated
Swiss cheese, grated
Gruyère cheese, grated
torn basil
extra virgin olive oil (I used a Sprinkling of Porto extra virgin olive oil I get from my two favorite chefs down here.   You know who you are...)

Get all the toppings prepared.

Then I remembered the basil growing in the back yard and picked a handful of that.

For the White Sauce:
2 TB unsalted butter
1 TB oil
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme

1 cup milk (I never have whole milk on hand, so I always substitute with what I do have.  For whole milk, the combination is 1 oz. heavy cream combined with 7 oz. skim milk.)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp dried oregano
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Heat butter and oil over low heat until butter melts.  Add onion and cook, stirring, about 2-3 minutes.  Add in garlic and thyme, and cook, stirring, about a minute.  Stir in flour and cook 1-2 minutes to get the raw taste out of the flour.  Slowly add skim and cream mixture, or whole milk if you have it, and continue stirring until thickened.  Stir in Parmesan cheese.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Wait until the end to season the sauce, since the Parm is already salty.

Now the fun begins.

Spread the white sauce evenly over the pizza.

Place the spinach, leaf by leaf, over top.

Artfully arrange the mushrooms slices.

Drizzle just a little bit of the black truffle oil over the mushrooms
Truffle oil is powerful stuff.  A little goes a long way, so use sparingly.
I drop-by-drop dripped maybe a teaspoon total over the shrooms.

Add the rest of the ingredients.
You can add whatever you want.
We used a bell pepper and a slightly hot yellow banana pepper from the garden.
Sweet onion and red onion slices.
Sliced black olives.
And basil.

Then we started on the cheeses.
Mozzarella, Swiss, and Gruyère.

Then a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil over top.
And it's ready for the oven.

My oven was heated to 500° and I always use a pizza stone which has been heating at 500° for at least 30 minutes.  The pizza pan went on the stone for 3 minutes.  Then I rotated the pan and baked for another 3 minutes.  Then, I slid the pizza off of the pan and onto the stone and baked until the cheese and crust looked right - about 4 more minutes.  Remove from oven and place on rack.

This was a perfect pizza!

Enjoy!

Good pizza!