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Cooking Session #3: Potato Leek Pizza using homemade dough

As a part of USD 435's Parents as Teachers Good, Cheap & Nutritious grant, provided by the Community Foundation of Dickinson County, we've been doing a series of cooking workshops using recipes from the cookbook Good and Cheap,by Leanne Brown. This morning during a playgroup, parents made batch of pizza dough to take home and we then assembled a Potato Leek Pizza. Below are both recipes with notes about our additions and things that could be added to each.

Potato Leek Pizza    Makes 4 pizzas
Note: Dividing the dough into 4 pieces makes a smaller sized pizza so perhaps 3 pizzas is a more realistic yield!
We used a mandolin to quickly
create thin potato slices.
Pizza dough for 4 pizzas
2 tablespoons olive oil — divided use
1 russet potato or 3 small potatoes, sliced into thin circle
3 leeks, white section sliced (see cleaning instructions below)
Salt & pepper
1 lb. mozzarella, shredded
Other things we added: fresh herbs + dried red pepper flakes, we also drizzled the rolled out crust with olive oil before adding the toppings
Other things we discussed adding: roasted red pepper, Canadian bacon, cooked & crumbled bacon

1.     Turn the oven to 500° F.
2.     Put a large pan on medium heat and add l tablespoon of olive oil.
3.     Once the oil is hot, add the potato slices evenly to the pan, making sure each slice is touching the bottom. (If you slice them thin enough, they’ll turn out almost like little chips.)
4.     Let them cook until they start to crinkle around the edges and turn brown.
5.     Flip them over and brown the other side, then move them to a bowl.
6.     Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then toss with your hands (after they cool down) to make sure they’re evenly coated.
7.     Heat up another tablespoon of oil in the same pan, then toss in the leek slices, stirring occasionally until they’re soft, about 5 minutes.
8.     Toss them with the potato slices and add a but more salt and pepper.
9.     Clear a space on the counter and sprinkle with flour. Divide your dough into 4 equal pieces.
10.  One at a time, stretch the doughs into crusts. You can use a rolling pin or just slowly use your fingers and hands. Make them as thin or thick as you prefer.
11.  Once the curst is the desired shaped and thickness, dust the back of a cookie sheet (or pizza pan) with flour or cornmeal to keep the crust from sticking, then transfer the dough to the sheet.
12.  Now layer it with ¼ of the potato and leek mixture and ¼ of the shredded mozzarella.
13.  Bake for 5 to 8 minutes, keeping an eye on the oven and the pizza. The crust should be light brown and the cheese melted. NOTE: It took more like 12 to 15 minutes per pizza -- we baked them until the edges and bottom of the pizza were nicely browned and crisp.
14.  Repeat the process until you’ve baked all pizzas. If your oven is big enough, bake more than one pizza at a time.

How to clean and prep a leek . . .
·   Slice off the majority of the leek's dark green end, leaving just a little of the dark green and the part where the color is a pale green and white. (The upper portion of the dark green part is tough and not really edible.)
·   Cut off the root end of the pale green and white section; slice lengthwise and wash thoroughly; drain and dry. (Leeks grow in sand that can get trapped inside the growing vegetable; it may even be necessary to soak the leek in water to insure a sand-free veggie.)
·   Chop or slice as directed in recipes.

Check out the health benefits of leeks @ 
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/02/08/leeks-benefits.aspx

Pizza Dough    Makes 4 individual pizzas
The following directions provide two ways to make pizza dough: the fast way and the slow way. They’re the same amount of work, just with different waits. The slow method is convenient for a weekday if you make it before bed the night before, pop it in the fridge, then pull it out to rise before dinner.

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour (or use part white whole wheat flour if you want to up the whole grain benefits)
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ to 1 teaspoon instant yeast (not Rapid-rise yeast)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ¼ cups water @ room temperature (about 110° F.) for Fast Method; cold for Slow Method
Other things we added: about  ½ teaspoon granulated sugar to help feed the yeast
Other things that could be added: Italian seasoning, about 1 teaspoon or more to the dry mixture to add more flavor to the dough

Fast Method
1.     Measure out the flour, salt and 1 teaspoon of yeast into a big bowl. Mix the oil into the flour with your hands, crumbling it until the texture is a bit sandy.
2.     Then add the room-temperature water. Keep mixing with your hands until it comes together.
3.     Knead the dough on a lightly floured countertop for 5 to 7 minutes, until it becomes a smooth elastic ball. The dough will be smooth but quite wet.
4.     Add a small amount of oil to a bowl.
5.     Place your dough ball in the oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
6.     Let it rise for 1 ½ to 3 hours, depending on the warmth of your kitchen. It’s done rising when it has doubled in size. Then it’ll be ready to shape into your favorite pizza!

Slow Method
If you’re organized enough or have the time to make the slow dough, this method results in the best dough.
Use the same process as listed above, but add only ½ teaspoon of yeast to the flour mixture. Rather than room temperature, the water should be very cold.
After you place the dough ball in a bowl and cover it, leave it in the fridge overnight (this gives the dough a better flavor; it also makes the dough more elastic and easier to work with).
The next day, 2 to 3 hours before you want to bake your pizzas, remove the dough from the fridge to return to room temperature.

1.     Measure out the flour, salt and ½ teaspoon of yeast into a big bowl. Mix the oil into the flour with your hands, crumbling it until the texture is a bit sandy.
2.     Then add the cold water. Keep mixing with your hands until it comes together.
3.     Knead the dough on a lightly floured countertop for 5 to 7 minutes, until it becomes a smooth elastic ball. The dough will be smooth but quite wet.
4.     Add a small amount of oil to a bowl.
5.     Place your dough ball in the oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap; put in fridge and leave overnight.
6.     The next day, 2 to 3 hours before you want to bake your pizzas, remove the dough from the fridge to return to room temperature — it’s done rising when it has doubled in size. Then it’ll be ready to shape into your favorite pizza!
Parents working on their take-home pizza dough (above and below). 

And, just for fun, we made an extra batch of pizza dough for the toddlers to manipulate, stretch, and twist as they worked on gross and fine motor development . . .

To date we've also prepared Cornmeal Crusted Veggies + we had a pasta party that featured the homemade tomato sauce in the cookbook.

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