Thursday, August 24, 2006

Pizza night

Tomorrow is pizza night. The come around quickly nowadays. See, we decided to make Fridays pizza/movie night here in the fam. Since many missionary kids have a problem developing a concept of time, I thought it would help Blake to get the concept of a weeks and months down. [A week is the amount of time between pizza nights; four pizza nights is one month, etx.].
After almost a year of pizza nights, I've got it pretty much down to a science. But it still takes all Friday afternoon. Two dough recipes and three pizzas-pepperoni, Canadian bacon/pineapple, and banana. The boys (all three of them) absolutely love it.
My favorite dough recipe is Basil Parmesan. I like it not only because it is beautiful and good tasting (in that order), but it's very easy to handle. I also get a big ego rise out of using my own fresh basil and grating parmesan cheese. It also fits perfectly on a rectangle pizza stone. I put pepperoni on it.
In addition to this, I use Jay's Signature Pizza Crust from allrecipes. For some reason, I have to use 5 1/3 cups of flour instead of Jay's 3. But, then I divide it in half and make the banana and Cannadian bacon/pineapple.
To make a banana, I roll out the crust and coat it with a heavy layer of cinnamon sugar. Then layer banana slices to cover and coat with another heavy layer of cinnamon sugar. Then, layer just a sprinkling of mozzarella, and yes, even more cinnamon sugar. Basically, the more cinnamon sugar you use, the better. If it's low-moisture mozzarella like in the states, I spray the bananas with some Pam to keep them from drying out. Bake as usual.
Since I use fresh pineapple for the Canadian bacon/pineapple pizza, I microwave the pineapple for a few minutes and try to get some of the moisture out. I do the same for the Canadian bacon.
One unanticipated benefit for me has been that it has really helped with menu planning. Since we eat the leftovers on Saturday, that's two less days for me to have to plan.
So, anyone have a good movie suggestion?

4 comments:

Dianna said...

I'd say what time should I come over but you're a little bit of a commute...

Campbell Dunson said...

Dianna,
We'd love to have you, tho!

faceunveiled said...

Wow, you are hard-core! I'm sure glad we have The Pizza Co. here in Thailand to satisfy our pizza cravings!

My one question is, can you buy Pam in Brazil or is it brought from the States? Pam is one of the little luxueries that we just can't get in Thailand.

Campbell Dunson said...

Lori,
Actually, we can buy it here. It's expensive (about 3x the cost of what it would be in the states), but one can lasts me forever.