Grated Parmigiano in the dough, baked as bread then again on low to dry. Dough cut with a bench scraper. Color from Santa Fe chile powder.
Pork loin, corn on cob
Pork chops are brined along with some sugar.
Corn is husked, the silk torn off, buttered and seasoned and wrapped and microwaved for five minutes.
Cheeseburger on focaccia
The fried cheese skirt is crucial. A non-stick pan used to facilitate. A lid to ensure complete meltage. It is the first thing you break off and eat to tidy it up before getting on with consuming the sandwich.
Doesn't this photo make you want to pull that cheese off and eat it like a cracker?
In the end it is the fried cheese and tomato and lettuce that makes it, the meat is fine and more than a little of the bread is left on the plate.
I'm becoming very fussy about sandwich bread. Rarely is the bread perfect. It so often gets the short shrift. The sandwich I had at Red Rocks is such and I recalled that happened the first time there too. It's a thing with them. And I wonder if the cooks actually ever tried eating one their own BLTs. If they had then they'd know that they're using way too thick of bread. This right here is about right. I'm just not that hungry for it right now. The temperature is hot outside. A salad will do.
Doughnuts and focaccia
These are terrible. Too chewy. Not recommended. I could only eat five of these and five of the holes and I hated every bite.
Two separate batches of dough are prepared with 1 cup water each. One for focaccia has a little sugar to start the yeast quickly and no salt to interrupt its speed getting started. That will come later, the other dough has more sugar for doughnuts and its salt is included. Although started after and although it has salt, the doughnuts are fried before the focaccia is baked because the doughnuts do not have to rise very much the second time. They puff up in oil magically.
Focaccia
Those are hot Hatch type chiles from Tony's and two types of olives. I realized again I just don't care for olives and never will no matter how many times I try them and I realized too the focaccia must be thicker. This works as a sort of sauceless pizza.
Cheese pizza
Wet dough with 20% semolina, that is two level tablespoons for 1/2 cup water, all purpose flour for the rest in increments until the dough pulls away from the bowl and not so much flour that it can be handled without sticking and with no salt to speed up proofing.
At second proofing dumped onto a baking pan with generous oil and treated as focaccia, salt and dry oregano poked in, olive oil drizzled into the depressions that can go all the way through, sauce ladled on.
The sauce absorbs into the bread on the second rise.
It's been a lot of pizzas lately. The thing is, I weighed myself a week ago and discovered I'm underweight, one-hundred forty-three LBS at six feet, so, skinny. scrawny, you might say.
Ten stone. It suits me. And then you might say I suffer dysmorphia. Best I put on a few pounds. That's why all the pizza all of a sudden.
Plus it's easy. Childsplay, in fact. One of the first things I learned in first grade by following Chef Boyardee Pizza instructions. Each boxed pizza kit comes with a package of flour with yeast mixed in and salt. A package of dry herbs. A tiny package of dry Parmesan cheese, and a tin of tomato sauce. The simplest of all possible pizzas and I thought that is what pizza is, and how clever having it all figured out in advance like this.
I had a terrible time pushing the dough to the edges. It is difficult to manage and it kept shrinking back. I had no conception of dough resting and relaxing, no idea whatever of gluten protein molecule nor of its properties. I knew nothing about kneading or water-absorbtion. And even if it was explained I would still want to get on with the pizza. Sitting around waiting for it to become cooperative would be unacceptable, it wouldn't have made sense when I could be pushing it around into submission.
All those ingredients that come in a kit are everyday pantry items but I did not know that. The only reason for being is the boxed kits satisfy the needs of children with young mums who don't know that either.
I've been enjoying these pizzas a lot. I hope they do the trick and help put on a few pounds or at least stop the trend.
Baked potato, bacon, cheese sauce
Jacket potato. Full metal jacket except more like a warm comfy sweater. A sweater made of soft gooey cheese sauce.
Raw ↑.
1 cup béchamel regular white sauce.
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon flour
brown these two things in a small pot
1 Cup milk whisked in increments. Will thicken when boils. Will thicken more when cools.
Salt/pepper
few grinds nutmeg
Baked ↑.
Chile rellenos
These chiles are small.
Cheese is cut into wedges. How much cheese? As much as you care to eat. As much as the chiles will hold.
A batter is prepared with one egg and water, flour and masa harina.
Masa is where the corn flavor comes from.
Chile with a cheese wedge inside is is rolled in flour to help batter adhere. The batter is thinner than you'd imagine. The consistency of thin pancake batter, or thin as batter for crêpes.
Water will make crispier batter than milk.
Cooked on medium low so that the cheese inside melts before the egg in the batter cooks.
