Grilled Flatbread Pizza

I planned on making pizza for dinner tonight, and since zucchini week(s) is in full bloom, I thought I'd recreate this delicious zucchini parmesan pizza.  Then I saw a link on another blog to flatbread with creamy red pepper scallion spread.  I wasn't interested in the spread or the salad (I wanted pizza!), but the flatbread and the grilling sounded amazing.  And it was.

I followed the instructions from the blog on the flat bread (except I doubled it):

• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the bowl
• 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
• 2 cups bread flour (or a little less, see directions)
• 1/2 cup medium grind cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon salt

Add water and sugar to the bowl of a standing mixer fit with a dough hook. Sprinkle in the yeast and let sit for 5 minutes to bloom.

Mix in the olive oil then Add one cup of the flour along with the salt. Mix on low until well incorporated, and then turn the speed up to medium and mix for 3 minutes.

Add another 1/2 cup of flour and the 1/2 cup of cornmeal, and mix well, starting on low and then switching to medium speed. Then add another 1/2 cup of flour, again starting on low and switching to medium. Knead on medium for about 5 minutes. You may occasionally have to get in there with your hands if the dough starts climbing up the hook. It should become smooth and elastic and slightly tacky. At this point, incorporate flour by the tablespoon, with the mixer running. When it starts to seem dry, stop adding flour. This could be anywhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup. Knead again on medium until it is elastic easy to stretch, about 8 more minutes.

Meanwhile, drizzle about two tablespoons of olive oil into a large mixing bowl. The dough will double in size, so make sure you have enough room. Form the dough into a ball and place in the bowl, tossing it around to coat with oil. Cover the top in plastic wrap and put in a warm place. Let dough rise for about an hour, or until doubled in size.

When dough has doubled, fire up your grill. Keep the flame high and close the lid. If you have a thermometer, it should be at about 500 F.

Somewhere around this point I gathered all my toppings and sliced the veggies (thinly!) I also discovered as I was cooking that since my zucchini was a little on the big side, the slices weren't cooking much, so I took them off and grilled them directly on the grill- do this on a cooler part of your grill while the first side is cooking.  It helps to have all the toppings on a tray so they can be easily and quickly transported to the grill.

Punch the dough down, give it a quick knead and tear it into 4 equal-ish pieces. On a large cutting board, form each piece into an oval that is about 8 inches long and 5 inches across. I just use my hands for this, but you can use a rolling pin if you prefer.

Place the dough on the grill. It should take about 3 to 4 minutes for the bottoms to get grill marks and become firm. If it takes a little longer that’s cool, but definitely check one after 3 minutes.

Here is where I diverged from the original recipe.  When the first side of the flatbread is cooked (I burned mine a tiny bit on the first round) flip it over, turn down the heat a little and add pizza sauce and any toppings.  My favorite combo was the zucchini, eggplant, mushroom, tomato, parmesan cheese and bacon bits.  Make sure to put the grilled veggies on at this point and put a little more cheese over the top to hold everything on.  Close the grill and cook for a minute or two until the cheese is melted and toppings are as cooked as you'd like them.

Remove pizzas from the grill and cut them into manageable pieces and enjoy.  These were incredible.  My Mister even commented on how amazing they were after his first bite, and he doesn't dole out praise like that unless he really means it.  

I think we'll be using the flatbread recipe instead of pizza dough from now on.  The original blog post gives the following instructions for oven baking: 

~ If you prefer to bake the breads, you can do so in a 450 F oven, for 12 to 15 minutes. Place directly on a baking stone for the crispiest results, but a large baking sheet will work, too!

I think I might try it sometime when it's not so hot outside, and just roll it out regular pizza style.

Enjoy!

Butternut Squash Soup

The other day I remembered the shelf full of squash that is out in the garage and decided we'd better start eating more squash so none of them end up wasted.  I've been wanting to try butternut squash soup for awhile, and since we didn't have any other ideas for Sunday dinner, butternut squash soup it was.

My Mister was skeptical, but once he tasted it, he was converted.  It wasn't quite as good as the carrot soup we had at The Farm in Park City, but it wasn't too far behind in taste.  I may try the recipe with less squash and more carrots sometime...

I used this recipe from AllRecipes.com with a few alterations based on what I had and the reviews which suggested adding some things to make it not-so-bland.  Not-bland soup seems like a good thing.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 medium carrot, chopped
• 2 medium potatoes, cubed
• 1 medium butternut squash - peeled, seeded, and cubed
• 1 (32 fluid ounce) container chicken stock
• 
  

Melt butter in soup pot.  Add chopped onion and celery (unless you're using dried onions and celery, in which case, you can just add them at the same time as all the other vegetables.  Also, my addition- add 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced.  Chop and peel carrot, potatoes, and squash (it would probably be easier to cook the squash first, but you have to cook the carrot and potatoes anyway, and peeling the squash with the potato peeler wasn't that bad).  Add chopped veggies to pot, cook on high stirring constantly until the veggies are browned slightly (I didn't cook mine that long- I waited until they started sticking to the pot, then decided to just go ahead and add the chicken stock- which in my case was chicken base and water).  The recipe says to add just enough broth to cover the veggies, but it took all of it for me- I guess my squash was bigger than "medium".  I also sprinkled a shake or two of curry powder.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer on low for 40 minutes.  (after 25-30 the veggies looked soft enough to me, so I didn't keep cooking them).  Next, you blend portions in the blender (or a stick blender would work, right in the pot) until it's all blended.  

Serve with salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, and crunch bread.   You could use vegetable broth if you want to make it vegetarian.  My kids actually ate it without complaining- too much.  I was surprised.  It turned out to be a very nice consistency and the curry wasn't overpowering- I didn't add much, but I could just taste a hint of it.  I like butternut squash when it's not covered in brown sugar (I like it sweet too, but this was a nice savory change).

Fall Clean Up (part one)

This wasn't part of fall cleanup, but I had the picture, so here it is...  I tried out a new french bread recipe and we all liked it quite a bit, plus it was less work overall than the "artisan bread in 5-minutes-a-day" recipe that I was using.  It made three pretty nice sized loaves.  

We pulled out all the corn.  The cobs that were still on the stalks we are saving to feed to the chickens.  They're mostly dried out, but the chickens don't seem to mind.  So we'll let the rest of these dry out and give them out a few at a time.  Our corn patch actually produced quite a few ears, but I never thinned it, so the ears are all tiny, and it was hard to get into it to pick much.  We also cut off the sunflower heads.  I'll save some seed to plant more next year, and the rest I think I'm going to try roasting.  If it turns out well, we'll plant them more seriously next year.

I was hoping for a better butternut squash harvest, and there were only two jarrahdale squash, but we ended up with more pumpkins than I thought we'd get, considering our watering system didn't work out quite as well as we hoped it would.  

We picked the dried beans, we'll let them finish drying out, and shell them, and save the seed for next year.  This is my first year saving bean seeds, so I'm not sure how much I need, I'll post an update when we shell them.

We cleaned all the wet, gross, smelly wood shavings out of the chicken coop and replaced them with new, clean, dry shavings.  It smells so much better in there!  We also added a roost bar to help them get to the two side nesting boxes.  They were piling up in the middle box half the time instead of going in the other two.  Silly birds.  

My Mister ran the corn stalks through the chipper, and we added that, and the poo/shavings from the chicken coop to the big pile of grass (from when we mowed the field and RAKED THE WHOLE THING (that was fun).  Now we just need a rain to moisten the whole thing and it will really get hot.  There is already some nice compost in the bottom from just the grass.

Here's a before shot of where the chicken run used to be:

And here's where it is now- we moved the run and the little feeding area lean-to so that the chickens could scratch a new area, the whole thing was getting stinky, so hopefully some fresh land helps, and lets the old area recover a little.  In the spring we can move them back

I left two pumpkins in the garden since they were still green.  A smaller one, and then this HUGE one.  I  don't think it will turn orange in time for halloween, but I'm hoping we can get it pureed and in the freezer.  

Things to do another weekend:  

Weed whack strawberries, and cover with mulch 

Clean out raised beds

Save seeds from artichoke plants (if the things would ever flower!)

Pull the last of the onions

Put away watering system tubes

Prep and plant garlic bed

Clear out blackcap bed, and add compost

Mow

Pick grapes and do grape juice

Check bees 

Photo To Do (or I did) list:

Today I fed the little chickens, they're still in the garage and will be until we think they're big enough to safely mix with the older chickens, if that time ever comes.

 CP "helped" me mow the little area of lawn just outside the door.  Even the small area was a lot of work, but it felt good.  I love my reel mower.

I checked on the older chickens, they don't want to come outside, even though it is such a nice day.  I picked a few up and pushed them out the pop door, but they looked around and went back in.  Silly birds.

I put the cage over the peas.  Something (and by something I mean quail) has been chewing them to stubs.  Hopefully the cage protects the peas and they recover from their munching.  CP didn't think I could move the cage, but I told him I was pretty strong.  Afterward, he thought I was pretty strong too.

Here are the chewed on peas.  Kind of sad looking.

I uncovered the asparagus, and found several coming up.  I love spring.

I uncovered the artichokes, and I'm not sure any of the plants survived.  I'll give them a few weeks and see if there's any sign of life, then I'll plant something else in that spot.  The onions look good though.  

I had lunch.  Leftover stir fry on brown rice.  I didn't post about it at the time, but it was really good.  It was just olive oil, garlic, (would have had onions but I was out), carrots, broccoli, canned tomatoes, cashews, edamame, teriyake sauce, and a little curry.

I made bread.  

While the bread was baking CP and I went back outside and worked on mowing a little soccer field in the top half of the big field.  We're going to let the grass grow high around the edges to keep the ball from rolling where we don't want it, and also mow a maze into the bottom half. 

Honey Whole Wheat Bread (that isn't too sweet)

I've been looking for a good whole wheat bread recipe for a long time.  I've gone through a few different recipes.  Some have been good, but didn't have a great texture.  Others seemed to go stale too fast.  This one was a little too sweet for anything but pb&j's so I reduced the amount of honey in it.  The proof of the goodness of the recipe is that my 7-year-old doesn't pick the insides of his sandwich off and leave the bread like he was doing with my last recipe (it was really good, nice texture, but had no sweetener in it, and did tend to go stale faster than we ate it).  

I can't find our camera (thanks to my 3-year-old I'm sure!) so I stole this picture off of the food.com website where I got the recipe.

Another bonus of this recipe is 1 fewer raising times than my previous recipe.  

Ingredients:

4 1/2 tsp yeast

4 C water

1/2 C butter, softenend

1/4 C molases

1/4 C honey (the original called for 1/2 cup but it was too sweet)

2 tsp salt

10 C whole wheat flour (the original calls for 6c wheat 4c white flour, but it tastes good with all whole wheat)

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten (my addition since I'm using whole wheat flour)

Dissolve yeast in warm water.

In a large bowl comine butter, molases, honey, salt, and mix well.

Add yeast mixture, then gradually add flour.

Knead until smooth (I just do this in my kitchenaid)

Raise until double  (about 1 1/2 hours) in a warm place.

Punch down and let rest for a few minutes.

Divide into 4 parts (I do 3 because my bread pans are extra long) and shape into loaves.

Place in pans (it says to grease them, but I don't) and let rise for an hour or so.

Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes.