Pizza night occurs about every 10-days at Casa Beffa. We try to make the pizza we learned to love while living in Italy. So far, we like what we make at home better than what we've found in restaurants.
On a work night, we use a dough recipe from Giada Di Laurentis. It's easy, and pretty consistent. We prefer to use bread flour over all-purpose, and have been using a refrigerated yeast lately.
Most pizza gets and extra drizzle of olive oil.
Italian, of course. We typically use fresh Mozzarella di Bufala, and small cubes of Cacio di Roma for the cheese.
We like to make the tomato sauce using canned whole tomatoes and olive oil. I run the tomatoes through a food mill after they have reduced, then put the milled tomatoes back on the burner until they are at the desired consistency.
This is our standard Pizza Margherita for the girls. Emilia adds fresh Basil, Annabella; not yet...
Lately, we've been making a lot of meat based pizza. I'm not sure why. We've been using Italian peperoni, hot coppa, salami, or proscuitto crudo recently. I don't add olive oil when using the salumi, but tend to always put down some finely chopped garlic, Shitake mushrooms, a dash of oregano, and occasionally roasted red pepper.
We bake on a stone at a minimum temp of 500'F for 5-6 minutes. In the summer we make the pizza on the gas grill, during winter we bake in the oven.
If the meal turns out great, then it's ok to take advantage of a sale on Valentines right? I found these super thick lamb chops at Costco for $6/lb and couldn't pass them up.
