Oh, homemade pizza, it's been too long...



A quick search through my blog entries for pizza indicates that the last time I had homemade pizza was on March 22, 2010. I'm sad to say that that seems accurate.

So it's with much fanfare that I report that today marks my first post-Kara venture into the marvelous world of homemade pizza! I ended up making a double-batch of Wolfgang Puck's pizza dough which was featured on Food Wishes. I used up the hard whole wheat flour I had from when I was regularly making pizza dough from scratch and blended it with hard unbleached flour, rather than using the all-purpose flour called for in the original recipe. I made a pizza for lunch, set aside a portion of dough for Matt's dinner and froze the remaining six portions.

This iteration uses olive oil, pre-made bruschetta topping, sliced cremini mushrooms, black olives and chopped prosciutto. It's so good to be able to have homemade pizza again.

I think I'm going to look into other dough recipes in the coming months. This one is really quite good, but I think I'd like to find a good thin crust recipe, too.

THePETEBOX - Where Is My Mind (Cover)



Give it a chance.

Bánh mì with authentic chả lụa and do chua!



I seem to be steadily building upon my bánh mì-making skills by adding something new and authentic to the repertoire every time I crave one. This time, I made the daikon and carrot slaw, do chua, from scratch.

I picked up soft buns from Nino D'Aversa Bakery, used Commensal Veggie Paté and Kewpie Mayonnaise as my spreads, added pan-fried chả lụa in sesame oil, a fried egg, a dash of soy sauce, some fresh cilantro and freshly-made do chua to this iteration.

It turned out fantastically. I think I'll make variations on this sandwich all week. The only bad part is that all I have left to make for a "true" bánh mì experience is homemade baguettes, and I have no idea when I'll have the time to work on that.

And then, there's this...

Viva Vox Choir - Du Hast (A Capella)

Homemade biscuits



I've discovered that there are only so many ads for buttermilk biscuit breakfast sandwiches a person can be inundated with before succumbing. I found a recipe for Southern Buttermilk Biscuits, made a buttermilk substitute and got to baking.

These are damn fantastic.