Month: September 2011

Homemade Pizza Rules

Posted on by kimbesa

Your own homemade pizza can beat the pants off anybody’s. IMO.

Saw Hoda and Kathie Lee tasting Naked Pizza on the Today Show this past week.

It didn’t look naked to me. It looked pretty good, with a crust that looked whole grain and some good toppings. Best I could tell from TV.

But they’d just had some wine, which they were excited about.  Apparently it was aged in stainless barrels. So the pizza was not getting their full attention.

I understand convenience. Well-made homemade pizza can be just as convenient. The notion of “naked” pizza, as in “just plain pizza” appeals to me. I just put it through the lens of “homemade.”

Homemade pizza that rules them all

  • Make your crust with the balance of whole grains and flours that suit your taste
  • Select your toppings the same way: massive mushrooms or sausage sensation, or…
  • Bake it round, square or any other shape
  • Serve it HOT from the oven, no transport delays

Homemade pizza: well topped and always tasty!

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestmailby feather

Homemade Sausage Pizza | Inspired by Castle

Posted on by kimbesa

Homemade sausage pizza is a favorite at my house. I’ve written about it several times, and how much I love our local pizza sausage.

Add fresh basil? Sounds good. Let me get some green on my pizza.

Here’s how:

  • Choose fresh basil leaves
  • Rinse the leaves and pat dry
  • Stack several leaves together
  • Roll the stack
  • Use a sharp knife to thinly slice the leaves (cut across the width)

This will give you long thin strips of fragrant and tasty basil, what chefs call a chiffonade. Then arrange on your pizza, after the Parmesan and sausage, before the mozzarella.

Some people like to put on the whole leaves, but I like to have the dusky flavor spread out, so that every slice has some.

I used 8 medium sized leaves for my 14-inch pizza, and this was the ordinary basil variety that is common in farm markets and specialty groceries. You could experiment with other varieties, as you wish. I used smell as my guide, and I wanted to be sure and get an herb that would complement (and not overpower) the sauce and sausage.

I’ve seen recipes for basil on sausage pizza before. But what pushed me to try it?

I got the idea from an episode of [popup_product]Castle[/popup_product], and it just struck me as something that would be delicious. Castle is one of my top three favorite TV shows. It was a program from Season 3, “A Slide of Death.” This is the episode where the plot plays out against the intense rivalry between four New York pizza restaurants, with names so similar it adds another layer to the mystery.

In the end, Castle goes “across a bridge” to get a special sausage basil pizza for his daughter. He’s such a good dad! (I’ll forgive him not making it himself.)

Any night that Castle is on is a good night for homemade sausage pizza, too!

 

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestmailby feather