Food, glorious food... done my way. Pretence of perfection

Monday, March 27, 2006

Sunday cookathon - pizza and cheesecake

As regular readers will know I just came back from Rome, where I'd been snacking on pizzas daily :-) I was inspired to make my own today, after purchasing a pizza stone yesterday (Saturday).

Using the Italian type "OO" flour I made up the dough using salt, yeast, milk, olive oil, water and a sprinkling of oregano.

When I opened the box with my new toy the instructions were missing, so after a consult with google I was pretty sure what needed to be done. I warmed the oven and stone together from cold, and after the mixing and proving of the dough were over I made my first attempt.

The first try was just extra virgin olive oil and sea salt.

Second was milanese salami, a good local goats cheese, tomato and onion/garlic passata for the base. Topped with basil.

The first came out gorgeous. The second was pretty edible too ;-)

I think next time I'll allow the stone to warm up again before I put the next pizza on. Plus, I'll need to come up with a better method of putting the pizza on the stone... it wasn't the most elegant of operations :-)

Cheesecake. A variation on my previous recipes, though still New York style. Here's the full recipe. My previous attempts did not use cocoa powder and chocolate (72%) in the base.

The soured cream was new (I'll try the mascarpone next time, I not sure how different they are). The recipe called for vanilla essence, I though it would be nice to use the real (expensive) version. The little black dots effect is cool :-)

The cooking strategy was different too, a high initial heat and a lower heat to follow to set it, along with leaving it in the oven without the heat on was supposed to prevent it from cracking the top. It didn't work, but at least it now has character... and bags full of taste!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful post!

I bet you ate some incredible pizza in Rome.

I was interested to read that you were using type 00 flour. May I ask where you purchased it? I'm here in Toronto and it's impossible to find.

Nazca said...

It was gorgeous! the intense heat from the wood burning ovens is what makes it I think.

Still mine are good too, which is a bonus since I still have half the dough left for tonight!

I buy the flour in my local deli, have you thought about buying online... i'd ask jeeves, or google :-)

Else, be nice to me and I'll send you a bag :-)

Cindy said...

Now I wanna eat a pizza and a piece of cheesecake ! The cheesecake looks delicious. It's 4 am and coz of you I'm hungry :(

Nazca said...

If it's 4am there's no pizza left! Cheesecake is in the fridge, help yourself :-)