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Pizza With Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, Arugula and Walnuts
Pizza With Mushrooms, Goat Cheese, Arugula and Walnuts
By Martha Rose Shulman (NYT)
Pizza Dough (and Mushroom and Goat Cheese Pizza)
Pizza Dough
This is my favorite recipe for pizza dough which I make all the time. I make it in batches and freeze dough lumps. A kitchen aid mixer or other device to mix dough makes life a lot easier, but I also made this for years by hand. The yield on this recipe is 3-4 cookie sheet (or baking stone) sized pizza crusts.
3 cups warm wrist temp water
1 rounded TB of active dry yeast
3 TB honey
1.5 TB salt
6-8 cups flour (I use up to 1/3 whole wheat flour and the rest Milanaise (unbleached white) all purpose)
Place the wrist temp warm water in a bowl (or the bowl of a mixer). Sprinkle in the yeast and then honey and give the yeast a few minutes to proof (let it get all foamy/yeasty which demonstrates yeast is working). Mix in a few cups of flour and then the salt. Keep adding flour until the dough is smooth, pliable, not too sticky. Too much flour will yield a dough that is hard to work with and tough. But too little flour is also challenging in that it is hard/sticky to handle and when stretching and if your oven time is not long or hot enough you may have soggy dough in the middle of your pizza. Don't worry though. There's a pretty large margin of error here. Go with your gut, you will be fine. Once the dough feels right, cut it into 4 pieces. At this point you can toss 2 or 3 in the freezer if you'd like (lightly flour dusted and tossed into a tightly sealed plastic bag).
If using your pizza dough, let it rise now in a clean oiled bowl for about an hour until doubled in bulk. Then punch it down and stretch it (lightly dusted with flour) or roll it out on a floured board. I don't have a pizza peel but I do have a stone. My process is this:
Preheat the oven to 450 with the baking stone inside and let it get nice and hot.
I stretch my dough out on a piece of parchment paper sprinkled with cornmeal to prevent dough from sticking.
Then I dress my pizza with toppings.
Next I slide my parchment paper onto a cookie sheet and bring to the oven and then slide the parchment with pizza onto the baking stone.
Bake for 5 minutes until the pizza firms up a bit.
Then carefully, ever so carefully slip the parchment from under the pizza so it's baking directly on the stone.
Then bake for another 5-8 or so minutes until it looks just perfect.
pizza dough
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 pound mushrooms, trimmed, cleaned and sliced
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
4 ounces goat cheese
4 walnuts, shelled and chopped
About 1 heaped cup arugula leaves
1/4 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon walnut oil
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone inside, if available. Roll out the dough to fit a 12- to 14-inch pizza pan.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large, heavy skillet, and add the mushrooms. Cook, stirring, until the mushrooms are tender and moist, four to five minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and remove from the heat.
