Pizza!

Pizza is probably my favorite food.  I could easily eat pizza daily and be completely happy with my life.  My mom, who's a culinary arts teacher and trained chef, has been making pizza for us since I was kid.  As I grew older, of course I wanted to make my own.  So, a few years back, I bought all the basics: pizza stone, peel, badass pizza cutter and some 00 flour to make authentic, Italian pizza dough.  I followed the dough recipe from Roberta's Pizza in BK, made my families traditional sauce and experimented with different combinations to mixed but mostly good results. All was good in the land of pizza, for a time, until I discovered sourdough.

Over the holidays, I saw Micheal Pollen's show "Cooked" and became fascinated with traditional sourdough bread.  I began my own natural starter and began applying it to my bread and pizza doughs.  The bread has a long way to go and when it's ready I will be writing about that but what's been filling my belly this past week has been calzones!  After watching the mouth watering calzones being made at Lucali in BK (which is my favorite pizza place on earth) in this episode of "Sean in the Wild" I have been putting all my culinary focus into the wonderful, hearty food that is a calzone.  

If you want to make your own calzone but are a tad hesitant, here's what I recommend: Watch this episode of "Sean in the Wild" to see some basic techniques, purchase a single dough from your local pizza shop and the desired ingredients from the super market.  Apply the technique you see in the video, but substitute a baking sheet for pizza stone.  Sprinkle flower on the sheet to avoid sticking and cook in a preheated oven at 500 for roughly 15 minutes.  It will be ready when the crust in golden brown and firm to the touch.

​Advanced level: Pizza dough from Roberta's Pizza in BK

Culinary adventurer:  Sourdough Starter Recipe, Sourdough Pizza Recipe