Pizza, all rolled up

Thursday nights have become homemade pizza night at our house.  Awhile back I checked out Jim Lahey's My Pizza from the library and ever since, we have experimented with better than decent and sometimes darn good homemade pizza.  I especially like that I can mix up the dough on Wednesday night, just mix, no kneading, and after leaving it on the counter, have great pizza dough on Thursday night.

Sometimes I plan specific toppings, while sometimes, I clean out the fridge. Leftovers make great pizza toppings.  The version shared below is an example of both with a slight twist. Lahey recommends preheating one's oven to 500+ degrees for at least 45 minutes before baking your pizzas. This is great except when our un-air-conditioned kitchen is already over 80 degrees in the summer or a weeknight when dinner should be served before the kids' bedtime. I started making stromboli because it cuts my oven-on time to a half an hour to forty minutes.

Weeknight Stromboli
Dough:

• 500 g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 g active dry yeast
• 16 g sea salt
• 350 g water

Yes, I prefer to weigh ingredients in a yeast dough.  With the variable humidity in our house, it is more accurate than volume measures.  It also gives me an excuse to pull out the cool digital kitchen scale my mother-on-law got me for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Combine all ingredients thoroughly.  Cover and let rise on the counter for 18-24 hours.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Pat out or toss to make a rectangle (for stromboli).  Note, the dough is pretty wet so I use a lot of flour to prevent sticking to me and the work surface or pan.  Make a row of toppings down the middle of the rectangle.  Cover with both flaps of dough.  Tuck ends under.  Make a couple of steam vents.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and everything is bubbly.

The stromboli shown here is stuffed with homemade pesto, leftover Caprese salad with local fresh mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes and some browned pancetta bits.  The pancetta had been procured specifically for pizza night.  Everything else was leftovers.