Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The closest I have come to recreating a Cheeseboard pizza


Pizza for dinner - 7/23/08
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.
How can I convey to you, reader, how good this pizza was (and I say was, because it is gone - I ate the WHOLE pizza. All 8 slices.)?

As the title of this post states, this is the closest that I have ever come to recreating a pizza from Cheeseboard. Now, if you have ever heard me wax poetic about The Cheeseboard and you know me, you are aware that I do not have a large enough ego to even attempt to recreate one of their pizzas. This is just a "pizza in the style of Cheeseboard." Cheeseboard pizzas are truly a heaven on earth.

I have recently returned to bread baking thanks to Peter Reinhart, and others. 4-6 baguettes every week, plus pizza. The pizza recipe comes from the King Arthur flour website. Now, if I were able to afford KA flour, I would buy it every time. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Tonight Antonia and I had pizza made from the KA .

The routine at our house when it comes to pizza is that each of us makes our own pizza. I divide the dough recipe in half and we bake two pizza: one for Antonia, and one for me. We each design our own.

Tonight, Antonia's was comprised of: tomato sauce, meatballs, onions, mushrooms, scallions, and zucchini.

Mine, as the title of this post suggests, was good enough mention Cheeseboard in the same sentence.

My pizza was topped with: Roma tomatoes (home grown), roasted zucchini (home grown), garlic (home grown), mushrooms, sauteed red onions, scallions, Gruyere, and Mozzarella. This was a truly sublime pizza. The vegetable:cheese ratio was perfect. The crust was great thanks to 500ºF on a pizza stone for 12 minutes.

Now, with such a tasty pizza, only a good bottle of wine could make things even better, and such was the case:
2005 Hanzell Chardonnay, courtesy of our friend Wynne.

This was truly one of the nicest meals that I can remember making at home: we ate outside, it was warm, Antonia and I had great conversation - everything was perfect.

To top the whole experience off, I was fortunate enough to have Stakes Is High by De La Soul playing while I wrote this, an album which contains one of my favorite songs: Itzsoweezee (Hot).

Enjoy your dinner, enjoy your pizza, enjoy your wine!

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