I made this pizza for dinner tonight! Beets, spinach, caramelized onions, roasted peppers, mushrooms, and cheese. I’ve been making loads of no-knead bread and rolls as well as this pizza dough. Super easy, but you have to allow for lots of rising time. This morning I started at around 9:30 a.m. with the following:

3 cups lukewarm water (I used whey from the last time I made ricotta cheese)

1/2 teaspoon yeast

1 Tablespoon honey

2 teaspoons salt

7 or more cups of flour (I used a combination of around 5 cups of all-purpose, 1 cup of bread flour, and 1 cup of whole wheat flour)

olive oil

I mixed the water, yeast, and honey together in a large bowl, then added the flour and salt and mixed everything together until smooth. The dough was pretty sticky, so I added a bit more flour. I coated the dough with olive oil, covered it up and left it near the heating vent so that it would stay nice and warm. At lunchtime my son punched it down and gave it a bit of a knead. Then we covered it up and let it rise most of the afternoon.

At around 4 p.m., I buttered two pans: my big roasting pan (roughly 12 x 18 inches) and a round 16-inch pizza pan. I then coated both with another layer of olive oil (doing the butter + olive oil ensures that the pizza will not stick and will brown up nicely.

I then took around 2/3 of the dough and stretched it into a rectangular shape to put into the roasting pan, and stretched about 1/3 in a circular shape for the pizza pan. Went for a walk and to run a few errands, then came back and chopped and pan-roasted some vegetables. I like to caramelize onions, but had to rush today. While those were cooking, I flipped the dough over (this gets rid of some of the bigger bubbles), then I re-stretched and re-shaped the dough so that it covered bottom of the pans with a little lip all the way round.

Since I used pre-made sauce and shredded mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, it was easy from there on in. Mine was vegetarian, but I put pepperoni on the other one for the rest of my family.

I baked both in a 450 degree F. over for around 15-20 minutes. The round one took a bit less time, so I took it out and then put both in for a final 5 minutes so they’d be ready at the same time.

Lots of baking adventures these days, but no skating adventures for me right now. COVID makes inside skating near-impossible, and even the outdoor rinks are closed right now.

I found a picture of myself from a quarter-century ago, skating around the speed-skating rink (John Rose Oval). Here’s hoping I can post a much more recent one soon.

There have been some bright spots these past couple of months, so here’s some pictures to enjoy. Happy and healthy holidays ahead to all!