Recipe: Apizza Dough

3/4 cup warm water
1 envelope active dry yeast
2+ cups flour (all purpose or bread flour)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

Pour warm water into a small bowl and sprinkle yeast on top. Let stand until yeast foams, about 5 minutes.

Brush a bowl lightly with olive oil.

Mix 2 cups flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Add yeast mixture and oil, and process until dough forms a sticky ball. (You may want to add more flour by tablespoonfuls if the dough is very sticky.)

Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead until smooth, adding more flour if dough is still sticky. Transfer to prepared bowl and turn dough in bowl to coat with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 hour. Punch down dough.

At this point, the dough is ready to be formed into pies, but we like to refrigerate it for an hour or even overnight to make it more manageable.

Makes two apizzas

Menu: A

An Aperitif of Amaretto, Aranciata soda, and Angostura bitters
Apple Ale
montepulciano d'Abruzzo
Alice White Chardonnay
Alaskan Amber

Antipasto

Arugula, Apple, and Anise salad

Artichoke and Asiago Apizza
Arugula and Prosciutto Apizza
Amorphous Apizza (an amoeba of artichoke hearts, feta, tomatoes and onions)

Anise Ice Cream with hot fudge and Almond Biscotti*

*Watch out for more foreshadowy desserts in the future (Bacon Cupcakes, Cider Doughnuts, Dipped Eclairs, etc.)

A is for...

Ashleigh and Abby with antipasto, Alaskan Amber, artichokes, montepulciano d'Abbruzo, amaretto, aranciata, angostura bitters, arugula, apples and anise

A night was Awesome. (O day was pretty good too.)

Steve and I weren't exactly sure what to expect -- this was our first alphabet dinner in a new town in a new house with new friends -- but the depth of research and level of enthusiasm were humbling. Even before the first bite, Dan and Abby had suggested extending the series to 52 meals (26 of foods beginning with the letter, and 26 of foods ending with the letter...hooray for unemployment).

First, "apizza" is what they call it in New Haven, CT, where even bad pizza is good.

Second, we have a sneaking suspiscion that Dan and Preston took bartending classes in college.

Finally, a few words on Steve and Ezra's Philosophy of Apizza:
Pizza is the ideal food. To make a real pizza, you need a brick oven. If you don't have a brick oven you need a pizza stone or two, and you need to push your little domestic cooker to its limit. (A source suggests that some tampering will allow you to cook pizza on your oven's autoclean setting. This sounds like an obvious fire hazard, but it's tempting...) Preheat the stones for as long as you can in order to "charge" them. Once you're sure the stones are hot, assemble the pies on a paddle covered in cornmeal -- the cornmeal acts like mini ball bearings, allowing you to slip, slide, jiggle and otherwise coerce the dough off the paddle and onto the stone. If artichoke juice soaks though the dough and counteracts the cornmeal so that everything is hopelessly stuck to the paddle, get angry (especially if it's A night.) Curse loudly. Throw things. Say the night is ruined. Try for a calzone. If the calzone also fails, go for an amorphous blob -- it's all going the same place anyway. If you set off the smoke alarm, remove the batteries. If it still continues to beep, ignore it. Serve the pizza on a lazy susan. Try to feed a slice to your cat. Enjoy!


Amaretto+Araciata+Angostura bitters=Ambrosia


Abby and Mixmaster Dan Z


Amorphous Apizza with Preston's Apple Ale


Arugula


The Skark bites into Artichoke Asiago Apizza


Anise soup


Hungriest cat in the world

And so we begin...again

Our adventure in alphabet dining begins Wednesday.

Let's eat!