Finally, a Whole Wheat Pizza Dough to Love!

I finally found a whole-wheat pizza crust recipe that I love. It comes from the book PIZZA: Grill It, Bake It, Love It! by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. I have it out from my local library, but want to get my own copy ASAP.

This recipe makes one pound of dough. I made a pizza on a cookie sheet with a medium-thin crust, and it was tender and not heavy.

3/4 cup lukewarm water (~105F-115F)

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour

2/3 all purpose flour, plus additional as needed

2 tablespoons walnut, canola, or vegetable oil (I used olive), plus addition for greasing

Place the water in a large bowl. Stir in yeast, sugar, and salt. Wait 5 minutes so the yeast can activate and begin to bubble and foam. (If it doesn't, throw the mixture out and start again. Either the water isn't the right temperature or the yeast expired.)

Stir both flours and oil into the yeast mixture until a soft dough forms. Lightly dust a clean, dry, work surface with all-purpose flour and turn the dough onto it. Knead by holding the dough with one hand, stretching it with the other, and then twisting the heel of the holding hand into the mass. Continually reshape the dough, folding it on itself as you knead. If it's sticking to your hands, add a little more all-purpose flour, in about 1 tablespoon increments. Continue kneading until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Wipe a clean, large bowl with a bit of cooking oil on a paper towel, or spray it with cooking spray. Place the dough in the prepared bowl, turning the dough so all sides are coating with oul, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours. Shape the dough into the crust shape desired.

Best-ever Glazed Salmon

When Mom made this recipe, adapted from the Curves cookbook, my favorite brother-in-law called it the best salmon he'd ever had. I concur. It's also extremely easy to make.

Glazed Salmon (for 2)

8 oz. salmon fillet

original Mrs. Dash seasoning (the cookbook calls for lemon pepper)

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon soy sauce

2 teaspoons brown sugar (cookbook calls for granular Splenda)

Place salmon fillet in a heavily greased baking dish, skin side down. Season with the Mrs. Dash to taste. Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350F for 40 minutes.

Mix together olive oil, soy sauce, and brown sugar to make sauce.

Uncover salmon, brush sauce on. Broil until nicely brown, basting several times.

Big Batch Meals.

I love to cook. Most of the time. Sometimes I just want to make something easy and be done with it. (Hence my love affair with frozen pizza.) Sometimes it gets too frustrating to work in my little apartment kitchen with scarce counter space, which is why I like to cook more elaborate meals in my mom's kitchen which is like wide-open Wyoming to my kitchen's Rhode Island. Actually, Rhode Island has many good things about it, and my kitchen doesn't, so it's a flawed analogy.

Sometimes when I'm very busy, having food ready in advance is a relief. Of course, sometimes, I just want to slack off on the cooking. So the solution is the big batch meal, in which I cook like I have a family of four to six, and feed the two of us two or three meals from it.

Last night was shepherd's pie, made with tri-color peppers instead of corn. (I'm not big on corn.)

I assembled it in the morning while the handyman worked in my apartment, then put it in the fridge and finished cooking it when it was time for dinner. You could also assemble this a day in advance, so if you have lots of time on Tuesday, but Wednesday is going to be nuts, you've still made a wholesome, satisfying meal you can feel good about.

Shepherd’s Pie Remix

about 1 ½ lbs. ground beef

1 packet brown gravy mix

1 lb. frozen cut up mixed peppers (Trader Joe’s calls it “Melange a Trois”)

Mashed potatoes enough to make at least 1” layer on top. (About 6 or 7 cups—a figure I got by converting to metric and doing math. Take it as a rough estimate.)

Brown beef in skillet. Add the gravy mix to the skillet along with the water called for in the directions and stir into the beef.

Spread beef in bottom of and 8" x 11" baking pan. Add the peppers in a layer on top. Then add the mashed potatoes.

You can store it in the fridge, covered in foil, up until the next day, if you’d like.

To finish the pie, bake on 350F for about 45 minutes to an hour, half the time with the foil on (so it won’t dry out), the remainder with the foil off (to brown the surface of the potatoes).

I am going to be busy in the early evening hours, and I know I will be too hungry to think straight when I get back, so I made this Colossal Crustless Quiche this morning, so that it will be there when we get home, and we can reheat our portions in the microwave. Tomorrow, Chris will get a slice in his lunchbox, and I'll probably have it for both breakfast and lunch at home. I also often make quiche on Saturday nights, while watching SNL, so that we have something substantial to eat before church Sunday morning. I love quiche. I can easily justify getting the package of five dozen eggs at BJ's.

The charms of this dish are many. It takes less than an hour to make, and barely 10 minutes of hands-on time. It has three of the five basic food groups. The cost of making this dish is about $8, though I know I spent less than that because I got most of the ingredients on sale. (I pretty much stockpile shredded cheese when it goes for $ 2 or less. It's very versatile, so I know I'll use it.) There's not a lot of prep work to do, as the cheese and broccoli come ready to mix in, and the ham and scallions can be effortlessly snipped into bits with kitchen shears. This recipe can be made vegetarian by omitting the ham.

Colossal Crustless Quiche

12 eggs

1 cup milk

2 cups (8oz) shredded Swiss cheese (or cheddar, or "Mexican" blend)

16 oz. frozen chopped broccoli

½ cup scallions or green onions, chopped or snipped into small pieces.

½ tsp black pepper

approximately ½ lb. sliced deli ham (or about 1 cup of other ham, like holiday leftovers), cut into medium-small pieces. (I grabbed a pile of ham slices, snipped it into strips with kitchen shears, and broke those up with my fingers.)

Preheat oven to 375F.

Coat 9” x 13” pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, beat eggs together with milk. Add cheese, broccoli (still frozen is OK if the pieces are small), scallions, ham, and pepper, and blend thoroughly.

Pour mixture into pan and spread with spatula to evenly distribute the ingredients and make the quiche a uniform thickness.

Bake for about 45 minutes. The sides of the quiche will turn medium brown and begin to pull away from the pan.