Red potato pizza

 

After reading on one of my favoritest blogs, House on Hill Road, and seeing her magnificent bread creations, I just had to get the book she recommends, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  I reserved it from NYPL and was like 300 out of 300 on the list of holds. Ugh.  That's one of the most annoying things about living in New York City: you find something cool and about a million of other people discover it too, rendering it way too annoying to be worth experiencing.

I have to say that the book really is amazing.  I quickly whipped up some dough, let it rise for two hours and popped it in the fridge.  And whenever we wanted some fresh bread, I took out a blob of dough, shape it, let it rest, preheat the oven and pizza stone and bake for about 30 minutes.  Delicious.

I've only made the light whole wheat bread so far, and it's been so good that I haven't really made anything else!  I'll have to buy the book because I know it's going to be a book I'll use forever.  (Reason number 395 why libraries rule: you get to test out cook books to see if you should buy the book. I've wasted a lot of money on what looked like good cookbooks but then turned out to be stinkers.)

For the red potato pizza, I took a blob of light whole wheat dough and rolled it out, which was a lot easier to do than more traditional doughs that pull back a lot.  Then:

• Brush a thin layer of good olive oil on the crust
• Sprinkle 2 cloves of chopped garlic
• Sprinkle about 1 tsp of dried basil
• Layer a good layer of super thinly sliced red potatoes (used a mandolin on the smallest thickness), after soaking them in cold water for a minute
• Sprinkle with salt and pepper
• Add about 2-4 tbsp fresh ricotta (from Joe's Dairy on Sullivan? and Houston), plopped around the pizza
• Cover with fresh sliced mozzerella (also from Joe's. Handmade there almost daily)
• Cover with another sprinkle of dried basil and salt (because the mozz was unsalted)

Place on pizza stone with corn meal.  Cook at 450 for about 20-25 minutes, or until the cheese and dough is just browned.  You can bake at higher temp, but my smoke detector always goes off at anything higher than 450.

The photo doesn't do it justice. I need to start baking and cooking during the day only to get better photos! Blech!