Productive Sunday

Today was a pretty productive day, food wise.  I managed a little laundry in between the cooking, but who enjoys that?  The other day I bought pizza ingredients and I decided that today was a good day to do that.  I had realized that I had never actually made my own pizza dough for pizza, only for calzones.  I used a recipe that I had used before for calzones because I remembered it had tasted really good, but I can't remember where I got it.  It made enough for 2 pizzas, so I froze the other half.  We had green pepper pizza tonight, next time it'll probably be artichokes 'cause I have a can of those sitting in my cabinet.

The dough after about an hour of rising.  I got a little excited and started this much earlier than I needed to. 

I forgot to take a picture of the pizza sans toppings.  This was the last slice and I had already put chipotle tabasco on it.  If you haven't tried the chipotle tabasco, I highly recommend it.

I was pretty bored today, so at some point I decided we needed something sweet.  I ate the last of the chocolate chip cookies tonight and had just seen a picture of some really yummy looking banana bread on tastespotting.com (this is my FAVORITE website for recipes).  I had 4 very ripe bananas in my freezer, so I made cinnamon swirl banana bread.  Something I learned today: don't add melted butter to slightly frozen bananas, it kind of defeats the purpose of melting the butter.  The final product was really good, but the batter looked a bit funny with butter chunks in it.

Yes, that is cinnamon and sugar on top.  There is another layer inside.

This was the finished product.  The cinnamon-sugar layer on the top got flaky and yummy.  Although, careful taking it out of the pan, the topping might fall off.  The outside looks a little dark because I use a non-stick pan and my oven is the worst...

Recipes after the jump...

Pizza Crust

1/2 cup warm water

1 packet yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)

1 1/4 cups water

2 tbsp olive oil

4 cups bread flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

1. Combine the 1/2 cup warm water and yeast in a small bowl.  Let bloom for five minutes.*
2. Add 1 1/4 cup room temperature water and oil.  Combine
3. Stir flour and salt in a separate bowl.  Slowly add the liquid to the flour mix.  Don't add it all at once.
4. Use your hands to knead the mixture together.  It takes a few minutes to get all of the flour incorporated into the dough.
5. Cover the dough with a damp paper towel.  Let rise for 1 hour.
6. After the hour, punch down the dough and then split in half.  Put cornmeal on a pizza peel (a really great tool for making bread and pizza).  Sprinkle the top of the dough with a little flour and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough until its as thin as you think you would like it, mine was probably 1/4 inch.
7. Add toppings and place in a 400 degree oven on a pizza stone that has preheated with the oven.

*Blooming is when the yeast starts to get all excited in the warm water.  It gets foamy and this process is used to make sure you live yeast I believe.


Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
From: Sandwich Hoss

For the bread:
3-4 over-ripe bananas, smooshed up (I used 4, for extreme moistness)
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (I think I used more like 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
dash of salt
1 1/2 cups flour 

For the swirl:
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbs cinnamon

1.  Preheat oven to 350. Butter and four a loaf pan. Mine was 9 x 5, but you could use any sort, I suppose. Just keep a close eye on it in the oven, and adjust the time as needed
2. Mix bananas, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla together. sprinkle baking soda and salt around on top of the banana mixture. Then gently stir in flour. Be careful not to over-mix!
3. In a small dish, mix together the 1/3 cup sugar and 1 Tbs cinnamon.
4. Add 1/2 of the batter to the loaf pan and then sprinkle half, or a little more than half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture all over the batter in the pan. Add the rest of the batter, and then sprinkle the leftover cinnamon-sugar on top.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes, but remember, if you’re using a different-sized loaf pan, be careful and keep a close eyeball on it!