Artichoke Pizza

One of the things I miss about the city, are the grocery stores. Out here on the High Planes there is only our small grocery store. Vickie manages it and does her best to bring in new products and organics but the vendors just don’t have access to the crazy, other-worldly inventory, of the speciality stores in Denver. Fruits, vegetables, nuts and meat from all over the world; trains, planes and automobiles, running their supply lines, non-stop to bring these culinary treasures under one roof, so that we might marvel at them as we fill our basket with old favorites and novelties from around the world. Vickie stalking the aisles, as I try to mentally calculate the ticket price of the cart, full of big city culinary delights. Way to much! I look for things to put back but Vickie gives me the evil eye. That’s when I spied the Artichoke hearts and immediately poured a few into the cart.

We both love artichoke dip, a favorite at brew pubs where we collect most of our calories when we are in the city. “What about Artichoke pizza”, I ask Vickie, and she agrees. Off to find some pine nuts. We made it out of the city the next day, with only one other stop at the giant King Soopers in Castle Rock. Then with the Jeep full of big city culinary treasures we headed across the High Planes on highway 86, which follows the old stage route used by the first gold miner’s in Colorado. Out across the Ponderosa covered mesas, through Franktown, Elizabeth and Kiowa to the windmill covered ridges around Limon.

Hand-made pizza has become, the kickoff the weekend evening meal for us. We never tire of marrying new toppings or visiting old favorites, but more often than not, on either Friday or Saturday evening, we are sipping vino tinto and eating pizza of our own design.

For years I made the crust with yeast, resting my dough for hours, trying to achieve that, just right chewy texture and firm foundation to showcase the toppings. Recently though, I switched to a pizza dough without yeast after considering thin crust tavern cut pizza, we like at a Brew Pub we frequent. I did a little research and came across a recipe for Chicago Thin Crust. This was the pizza style of my childhood. 

I remember riding my bicycle with friends, down through town to watch the hairy armed Italian guy throw the dough, through the warm steamy window of the pizza parlor. Everything white and floury, the scene sort of vignetted white around the edges, in the picture, lodged in my memory. The black hairy arms launching the big, round, unwieldily pie dough towards the ceiling, spinning it, then catching it as it fell back to earth, launching it again, spinning it, stretching it, to what felt like a large to him, he didn’t need to measure it, he knew when it was right. I roll my dough with a rolling pin.

The yeastless recipe is simple, for each pie: 1 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tbsp oil and a pinch of salt, garlic powder and oregano. Add just enough warm water, a little at time, until a dough ball forms. So, I was making two, which is just about right for two people, when one of them is a petite little lady and the other is a 200 pound hog-dog. Looked like:

• 2 cups flour, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• salt
• garlic powder
• oregano

I use the paddle on my mixer to blend all the dry ingredients together, so they can get to know each other a little better before I add in the wet ingredients.

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• Warm Water

I use filtered water, warmed to 110 or so on the stove, that is the temperature that worked well for yeast dough, so I do it. I don’t really know if it makes a difference but I know I am way more relaxed when I slide into warm water and I want my pizza dough relaxed, so I warm the water. I add the oil and about half the water I think I’ll need, to the dry ingredients and run the dough hook at about the middle setting, fairly high and beat the dough to a shaggy consistency. Then I add water, a tablespoon at a time or so until the dough forms a ball. I take the dough out and nead it by hand to test the temperature and consistency of the dough. Why I have it out of the bowl I add a thin layer of oil to the bowl and put the dough ball back in, cover it and store it on the back of the stove where it can stay warm and proof a bit, while I prepare the sauce.

The sauce will be a bechamel sauce or pizza gravy. I used coconut oil instead of butter to cook the onions in and nut milk, instead of dairy milk, because I am into plant fats, use whatever you want. Brown the onion, add in some garlic, I added about a tablespoon from a jar, whisk in the flour and milk to get a nice thick gravy. Add salt, pepper, oregano and parmesan cheese to suit your tastes. Let it cool while you roll out the dough.

• Coconut Oil
• 1 small onion
• garlic
• Flour
• Macadamia Nut milk
• salt 
• pepper
• Italian herbs of choice
• parmesan cheese

I generally use three different toppings along with the sauce and cheese, other flavors and ingredients are added in the sauce or cheese mixture. We considered Artichoke, Spinach and mushrooms first but went with black olives. I really like using spinach as a pizza topping and it worked well on this one, I like to chop most of it up into shreds, leaving a few whole leaves for decoration. The artichokes came from a can and I cut them into quarters, shown here, but Vickie suggested they should be smaller so I sliced across the quarters twice and that worked well. So, toppings looked like this:

• Bechamel sauce
• Spinach
• Artichoke hearts
• Black olives
• Cheese, mozzarella and parmesan

Thirteen minutes at 450-500 works pretty well for the Chicago Thin Crust and was perfect for getting a nice crust on the cheese. As far as I am concerned, a pizza stone and high oven temperature are requirements for good pizza. The Artichoke pizza was exceptional, Vickie rated it as 9 on a scale of 1-10 and she is a tough critic. The crust held up well to the ingredients and there were nice Unami flavors from the artichokes and olives. The green spinach made for a nice, Popeyesque base note and the mixture of mozzarella and parmesan topped it off with ooey gooey goodness.