Lotsa Cheeses
For no particular reason, this weekend turned into a cheese-baking spree. I planned to make Curry-Onion-Cheese Bread to take to our friends’ house as appetizers to snack before pizzas baked in their wood-fired oven. And I was making the pizza dough--the Reinhart recipe from TFL’s Pizza Primer (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pizza [1]). Then I learned that Beloved Spouse wanted to try baking cheese-crackers—a “homemade Cheez-Its" recipe from instructables.com
The cheese crackers were first, and I’m happy to say they are nothing like Cheez-Its, except the color. The recipe is very simple (http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Cheez-Its/#step1 [2]). Flour, butter, salt, cayenne and lots of sharp Cheddar.
These are sinfully delicious. The texture is very much like a cheesy pie crust. In fact, we decided it would be perfect as the crust for apple pie (some day when the diet is over, i.e., never).
Next up was the Curry-Onion-Cheese bread from The Cheese Board Collective Works. This is one of our favorites. This one has a mix of sharp Cheddar, Jarlsberg and Gruyere. Because I wanted it to be super fresh this evening, I wanted to bake it this morning. So, for the first time, I tried overnight bulk fermenting the dough. It needed a couple extra hours to warm up before baking, but the results were as good as always. Our friends loved it.
It was even better briefly toasted in the 800 degree WBO
Finally, the Pizza! We had had wood-baked pizza at our friends’ place before, but never with the outstanding dough from Peter Reinhart’s formula. It performed admirably. Crispy on the bottom and poofed full of holes around the crown. Here’s our friend, Kelly, the Pizzaiolo.
My favorite of the four pizzas was topped with fresh Mozzarella, Andouille sausage, roasted peppers and Portobella mushrooms.
And this one had Proscuitto and roasted green onions.
We waddled home full of excellent cheeses.
Glenn