Pizza Night: Tyler Florence Style

If you've never seen Tyler's Ultimate on Food Network, I highly suggest that you check it out.  He is one of my favorite chefs and constantly inspires cooking creativity.

My family and I love making pizza together, so I decided to try out Tyler Florence's fresh pizza dough and then add my own toppings.  So...

Start with Tyler's pizza dough recipe.  You'll find it HERE.  This will take up to 1 hour 30 minutes to make and let rise, so start early.  From there...

What you will need:
1/8-1/4 C yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 small Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
1/4 C diced red bell peppers
1/4 C crumbled bleu or gorgonzola cheese
Olive oil
1 C leftover salsa chicken
1 C fresh spinach

What you will do:
When the pizza dough is ready, put a metal cookie sheet into the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.
Roll out your dough until is is about 1/4" thick.
Take the hot cookie sheet out of the oven and drizzle with olive oil (just enough to coat the surface - about 1tsp).
Roll your pizza dough onto the cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil.
Evenly distribute the onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, and cheese onto the dough and put the pizza into the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes or until the crust is browned.
While the pizza is baking, reheat your salsa chicken in the microwave.
When the pizza is done, take it out of the oven and top with the chicken and fresh spinach.

Olive Oil and Greek Yogurt White Bread

I really enjoy trying out different breads.  This loaf was was, by far, the best I have made yet.  And it's really easy.

What you will need:

3C flour

1Tbsp baking soda

2Tbsp sugar

1tsp salt

1C warm water with 1Tbsp sugar

1 packet of yeast

1/3C extra virgin olive oil

3 heaping Tbsp of Greek yogurt

1 egg

What you will do:

Bloom the yeast in the water and sugar mixture for 5 minutes.

Sift together the dry ingredients.

Stir the olive oil, yogurt and egg into the dry ingredients.  The dough should be fairly wet.

Add the yeast and stir.  At this point, you can add extra flour if needed - If the dough is too wet and is not holding together.

Add a little bit of olive oil (about 2Tbsp) to a separate bowl and transfer your dough to this bowl.

Cover with a wet towel and put into a warm oven and allow the dough to rise for 90 minutes.  (To warm the oven, turn on to 300 for 2 minutes and then turn the oven off.)

Punch down the dough and kneed for 5 minutes on a floured surface.

Place the dough into a greased loaf pan and allow to rise again for 30 minutes in a warm oven.

Bake for 40 minutes at 350 until top crust is golden brown.

Chocolate Orange Bread

What you will need:

DRY INGREDIENTS

2C of flour (plus some for rolling the dough)

1tsp salt

2Tbsp sugar

3Tbsp cinnamon sugar mixture

4tsp baking powder

1/4C-1/2C chocolate chunks (depending on how chocolaty you want your bread)

WET INGREDIENTS

2 egg yolks

1/3C Greek yogurt

1/2C-1/3C milk

1Tbsp orange extract

What you will do:

Sift together all of your dry ingredients (except the chocolate) into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix together all of the wet ingredients.  Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine well to create a very wet dough.

Sprinkle a cutting board and rolling pin with flour.  Roll out your dough.  It should be about 1/4" thick and 8"-10" in diameter.  Chop up your chocolate chunks and sprinkle them evenly on the dough.

Roll up the dough and fold the edges under.  This is very important - Folding the edges will seal the sough and keep the chocolate from melting out of the edges of the loaf.

Place the rolled dough into a greased loaf pan.  Use a pastry brush and liberally coat the dough with egg wash (one egg, whisked).  Sprinkle sugar on top of the dough.

Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes until golden brown.  Mmmmmmmm.