Multi-Grain Veggie Pizza with Daisy Duke

     I was motivated Wednesday.  I started with the dough.  I had never made this dough before, and I was intrigued by a multi-grain dough and wondered if I had all of the ingredients.  When I read through the list, I was a little disheartened at the simple "multi-grain" listed.  What is "multi-grain" flour?  I was pretty sure I had never seen a bag labeled that way.  I certainly didn't want to buy another type of flour, considering I already have buckwheat, wheat, rye, durham, graham, semolina, rice, millet, and various other types.  My darling husband decided one day to surprise me with a dozen flours, so I have a few...  He is very thoughtful and practical (at least in this instance) all at once.
     I decided that if I were to combine three of these flours, it could then be called "multi-grain", and I was good.  I picked rye, buckwheat, and oat bran flours.  I was a little worried about it, because it was very gray once they were all combined.  I imagined that this was going to turn out to be a very dense, drab crust, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  The dough actually came together quite nicely.  I thought I would have to add extra water to make it become a smooth ball, but it did fine all on its own.

   I substituted fresh mozzarella for the regular shredded mozzarella it called for, because I had some that was soon going to be not-so-fresh.  Since it doesn't grate, and I wasn't necessarily thrilled about slicing it and trying to fit round slices together onto a pizza to cover the whole thing, I just chopped it up.

   I used my fancy chopping device to make little cubes of yellow squash in a flash.  I also used it to dice the tomatoes, slice the mushrooms and slice the onions.  The orange peppers I chopped by hand.  I find that if I use my chopper for peppers, they tend to get mushed and damaged a little bit.  They also gunk up my blades and the grid that pushes the veggies through the blade.

 With most of my veggies chopped, I pulled out the broccoli and blanched it.

      I just love how bright and beautiful dull, drab broccoli becomes with only a minute long bath of boiling water.  It is such a quick and easy way to brighten up a dish's appearance.  Once it was blanched, I chopped it up into pieces that were roughly the same size as the squash and tomatoes.  I bagged up the squash, tomatoes, broccoli, and peppers together in one bag.  The mushrooms and onions I put into the now empty mushroom container and covered them with plastic wrap.

     I had found a sauce in the freezer that was unlabeled, and I was pretty sure that it was the slow-simmered sauce that the original recipe called for.  I took it out and put it in the fridge to thaw.
     Thursday, I sailed through assembling the pizza.   My dough was soft and pliable - it hadn't risen a whole lot, but it did rise, so I was encouraged about the end result.

      I opened the container of sauce and gave it a sniff.  It smelled sweeter than I had expected.  I dipped a finger in and gave it a lick.  It was definitely not the slow-simmered tomato sauce.  It was sweet and tangy.  It was barbecue sauce.  I thought about my options at this point and decided - why not?  It had tomatoes in it.  It wasn't super sweet like commercial barbecue sauce, and it was a little spicy.  I used it anyway.

 I put on half the cheese (I had already decided that all of the cheese wasn't going underneath the veggies, because I wanted that brown bubbly cheese and the cohesion that only comes from cheese on top).  I topped the cheese with veggies, and put the rest of the cheese on top.  It was in the oven a mere fifteen minutes after I had started in on it.

DAISY DUKE

2 measures bourbon whiskey

1 measure lemon juice

½ measure grenadine

berries for garnish

Shake all ingredients in an ice-filled shaker.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with berries of your choice.

      I thought maybe this week I could entice Jeff with drink of the week, since it was mostly whiskey, but he declined.  It was delicious.  He made me the first one and "eyeballed" the measurements, so I cannot be sure if the first one tasted the way it should have.  It was a little too lemony for me.  For the second try, I asked him to up the whisky, lower the amount of lemon juice a little, and keep the grenadine the same.  That was pretty good.  I was hoping to try a third mixture, but I didn't last that long.  I was done halfway through the second one.

     The timer went off, and the pizza looked beautiful.  It was golden brown with those bright little trees poking up out of the cheese, and the crust had turned a nice toasty brown, too.  Because I had put half the cheese on the top, the lovely array of colors that the tomatoes and squash and peppers would have provided were lost, but it still looked great.  I opened the fridge to get some more lemon for my second drink, and that's when I saw it!  The container of mushrooms and onions that were supposed to go on the pizza that was now completely baked and sealed up with cheese.  Jeff suggested sautéing them and adding them to the top of the pizza, but I was done cooking for the evening.  I just wanted to eat.  So, the mushrooms and onions were spared for another time.

     The pizza was delicious just as it was.  The crust was crisp and snappy with a hearty, warm flavor to it.  The broccoli was still slightly firm and added a really nice chew to the toppings.  The tomatoes and the sweet peppers kept the cheesy concoction from becoming too rich.  The whole thing was warm, cheesy, and homey.  The barbecue sauce had a hint of sweetness and smokiness that was intriguing.  Had I not known the pizza was supposed to have onions and mushrooms, I don't think I would have missed them.

MULTI-GRAIN VEGGIE PIZZA

Adapted from The Everything Pizza Cookbook by Belinda Hulin

Crust:

½ cup + 2 tablespoons warm water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

½ tablespoon (or 1½ teaspoons) honey

¼ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup bread flour

¼ cup buckwheat flour

¼ cup rye flour

¼ oat bran flour

½ tablespoon (or 1½ teaspoons) olive oil

Sauce:

1½ teaspoons vegetable oil

2 ounces onion, roughly chopped

2 ounces green pepper, roughly chopped

1 large clove of garlic

2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1 ounce fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

4 tablespoons brown sugar

½ ounce crumbled bacon

¼ cup ketchup

1½ tablespoons water

Tabasco sauce to taste

The Rest of the Story:

5 ounces broccoli

7½ ounces fresh mozzarella, diced into small pieces

5½ ounces shredded sharp cheddar

2 ounces diced yellow squash

3½ ounces diced Roma tomatoes

2 ounces diced orange bell pepper

Make the crust:  Combine the ½ cup of water with the yeast, honey, and sugar.  Set aside for at least five minutes.  Combine the salt and flours in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook.  Add the yeast mixture and the olive oil and stir on low until the dough starts to combine.  Scrape the sides of the bowl to incorporate all of the ingredients.  Add more water, a tablespoon at a time until the dough starts to come together.  Continue to stir until dough starts to clings to the dough hook and becomes smooth and elastic.  Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp towel or loosely drape with plastic wrap.  Set in a warm, dry place for at least an hour.

Make the sauce:  Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.  Add the onions, peppers, and garlic and sauté until they begin to soften.  Place vegetable mixture in the blender.  Add the remaining ingredients to the blender and purée until smooth.  Pour the sauce back into the saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat while stirring.  Once it is boiling, lower the heat and simmer for about twenty minutes, stirring often, until the sauce has reduced to about half of its original volume and has become thick.

Assemble the pizza:  Preheat the oven to 500º F with a pizza stone inside, if using.  Fill a large bowl with ice water.  Set it aside.  In a medium-sized sauce pan, heat a couple of cups of water to boiling.  Drop the broccoli into the boiling water.  After about one minute, using a slotted spoon, fish the broccoli back out of the boiling water and place in the bowl of ice water.  Drain the broccoli and separate into small florets  chopping the larger stem pieces into a small dice.  On a cornmeal or flour dusted pizza peel or board, roll or stretch dough out into a sixteen inch circle.  Spread the barbecue sauce over the dough, leaving a little bit of the edge of the dough uncovered.  Sprinkle half of the mozzarella and half of the cheddar over the sauce.  Combine the broccoli pieces, the squash, tomatoes, and peppers together.  Distribute the vegetable mixture over the  cheese.  Sprinkle the rest of the cheeses over the vegetables.  slide the pizza onto the preheated pizza stone or transfer the pizza to a greased pizza pan and place in the preheated oven.  Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is brown and bubbly.  

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