Pizza Night!

Saturday is a natural night for pizza, apparently. In Nashville, my dear friend/relative BookCuz was hunkering down to homemade 'za just as we were preparing for the same here in Seattle - some connections run so deep that you end up sharing experiences from thousands of miles away. I promised her a pictorial review of our dinner, so here goes!

Pizza night begins with a poolish - a long fermented yeast starter, that eventually becomes dough for very fine pizza crust.

It's alive!



The Man of the House used a new recipe, and this one was decidedly more wet and tricky than the ones he's used in the past -




Mise en place ("everything in it's place") for the pies -



We also used this absolutely PERFECT wee tomato - the only one our garden produced:



We made 4 pizzas - first, a classic Margherita, with fresh mozzarella, the aforementioned tomato, fresh basil, and homemade tomato sauce - before:



After:



My favorite is the unlikely-sounding, but utterly scrumptious potato, blue cheese, caramelized onion, bacon, and rosemary - before:



After:



This one was baked with the homemade sauce and fresh mozzarella, and when it came out, we topped it with paper thin slices of prosciutto and some fresh arugula:



Finally, we had a great bacon and egg pizza - the eggs are cooked soft, so you can take the crust and dip it into the yolk-y goodness:



At some point BookCuz and I will be in the same city (we're hoping for the holidays), and we'll finally get a chance to break bread again. When we do, I'm hopeful that she'll eschew her usually healthy and reasonable eating habits so I can make something really good!