Pizza dough rescue
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I post a picture and just a few words.
This past Friday, I made a double batch of pizza dough, but I only ended up needed ¾ of it. So I stuck the last fourth in the fridge.
Yesterday I pulled it out, gently stretched it out on some (already used) parchment paper, threw it into a 500 ° oven (it was cold yesterday, so I totally did not mind heating up the kitchen!), and once it was finished, I put butter and garlic salt on top.
It was slightly yeasty tasting from the dough's long stay in the fridge, but my kids and I had no problem polishing it off.
One small bit of food waste avoided!
Sounds yummy! I'm pretty proud of reusing my parchment paper over and over, but yours puts me to shame! 🙂
I do tend to use it until it's kind of falling apart. 😉 It doesn't take a lot of uses when you're doing 500 degrees, though. Three pizzas or so and it's toast.
I thought it was on a wooden board until I read this comment!!!
I have reusable sheets (silicon??? they're dark brown now) that I've used for 15+ years. I don't even remember buying them but they've certainly repaid my investment many times over.
I wonder, would you be able to make that dough--or the fresh stuff-- into fresh baked pretzels? I've gotten the urge lately to make some and I didn't know if my pizza dough recipe would be good enough to pass for pretzel dough. Whaddya think?
I don't know...it is a little similar, although a lot of pretzel dough recipes I see do have a little sugar in them.
I agree, most pretzel recipes have a little bit of sugar and a little bit of melted butter involved. But the real pretzel flavor comes from the process of boiling the dough shapes briefly in water with baking soda before baking in the oven. (If you're making bagels, leave the baking soda out.) Good luck!
The recipe I use has sugar in it, 1 tsp in the recipe which makes two 12 inch pizzas. How much goes in pretzels do you think?
I make soft buttered pretzels once in a while and it's true there's a little sugar in it and I do boil the dough in water with baking soda for 15 seconds each side,then bake them for 8 minutes,then brush with melted butter and I bake for another 2 minutes.
I'm assuming that you boil them after you shape them?
Yes,you have to shape them first then boil it.
Actually, bagels are also boiled in alkaline water before baking as well. But pretzel-boiling water is much more alkaline than bagel-baking water.
Kristen you are a source of ongoing inspiration. I look forward to reading your posts every day.
Thank you for the encouragement! 🙂
A side-bar about wasted food: Driving around our community, seeing how many pumpkins are used in magnificent landscaping displays, I wonder, what happens to them? Am I being an old grinch to shake my head at the waste of good food?
I don't know. Some people carve theirs right before Halloween, light it once, and cook it the next day.
But I know I've read that pumpkins which are grown for carving aren't all that tasty when cooked (esp. as compared to pie pumpkins).
Perhaps think of them as eco-friendly, compostable decor (certainly more of a win than cheap plastic fall decorations?)
We have started using the little battery operated tea light candles in our pumpkins. No smell, and no lights blowing out. I tried cooking the pumpin for the first time last year, and was very proud of myself!
Oh, that drives me crazy, all those wasted pumpkins. Wish there was a recycling pumpkin place for after Halloween. I would take loads of them and freeze or can them and think of all the pumpkin baked goodies you could make with them! Some pumpkins are indeed tastier than others, but all of them taste good enough with enough spices.
We use our pumpkins for decoration right up until the week of Halloween, then scoop out the innards for roasted seeds and baked pumpkin goodies! And we get our carved faces in time for Halloween. No waste here... 🙂
We do have a recycling pumpkin place where we live. They also take a lot of the pumpkins to the zoo for the animals to eat/play around with.
What a neat idea! I wonder my town has anything like that!
Decorating pumpkins and pie pumpkins are, indeed, different breeds. (You knew I'd chime on this, didn't you?)
Decorating pumpkins are bred for even shape, thick skin, and longevity; taste is not a factor. Pie pumpkins are bred for taste and baking characteristics. Decorating pumpkins don't bake up all that tasty.
I also ran a side-by-side comparison of pumpkin custard from a pumpkin and from a can. No one could tell the difference. And the can is cheaper and a heck of a lot less work. It's canned for me, all the way.
I like the idea of taking the pumpkins to the zoo. Wonder if mine does that?
A few weeks ago I found some dough my husband had frozen (not very well) and decided to turn it into garlic cheese sticks to enjoy while watching our favorite football team on a Thursday night. 🙂 It wasn't that great but the boys loved it--I think enough cheese & garlic and butter an ANYTHING is good! 🙂
Mmmm, that sounds good too!