Two ways to do a crust

I recently went looking for a good pizza dough recipe.  Here's why, Matt and I have been eating a lot of eggplant parmesan lately.  Mostly because we have been getting a lot of eggplant in our CSA.  We don't quite love eggplant.  However, when it is in eggplant parm, we can't get enough of it!  The last time we made it, we had a lot of leftover slices of eggplant.  They were a little lonely and just kind of hanging out in the fridge.  There weren't enough to make another batch of eggplant parm, but they needed to be used because they were being threatened by all the oxygen we keep in there.  Trying hard to put my college educated brain to use, I searched for a solution.  Pizza came to mind and, KABLAM!!  Problem solved.  Eggplant parm pizza.

I found the recipe for the dough on epicurious, which is where I find a lot of recipes given my lack of good cooking knowledge.

2/3 c lukewarm water
1 pkg yeast
1 t sugar
2 T olive oil
1 2/3 c flour
1/4 c yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 t salt

Put the sugar, water and yeast in a bowl together and give it a little stir.  Once the yeast starts to foam add oil, flour, cornmeal and salt.  Stir it all together.  This is the part where you take off all your rings and get your hands dirty.  That's right, mix it with your hands.

Once you have it good and mixed, knead the dough for 5-10 minutes.  Kneading is important as it takes the water and flour mixture to a new level.  When you knead, the gluten in the flour becomes elastic.  This helps your dough to mix with the yeast and keeps it from ending up a big, dense mess.

Put your dough in a bowl, cover it and let it rise.  This will take around an hour.  The difference between the dough you've just kneaded and dough that has risen is easy to tell.  It is quite a bit fluffier when it rises.

Once your dough is done rising, you want to punch it in the face.  Always punch your dough.  This gets all the air out and allows you to form it. 

The flour is from our CSA

After punching, roll it out.  I divided mine into 6 balls like the recipe said.  I rolled them out into 7ish inch rounds.  I then stacked them on a cookie sheet leaving a piece of syran wrap between each round. 

This dough needs to be chilled.  I chilled mine overnight.

The tomato sauce is actually a sofrito that we had made for our paella.  It is basically onions cooked in oil with tomato sauce, salt and pimenton added.  The cheese is mozzarella.

The dough is good.  I however, tend to be a bit ADD.  I went looking for a dough recipe and failed to notice (until the next day when I was making my pizzas) that the recipe was for dough on the grill.  I just saw dough, glanced at the dough instructions and went to town.  That said, it worked fine in the oven.  I put it in for 5 minutes on 350.  Removed it, added my toppings and threw it back in for another 5.  It was not so much doughy as it was cornmealy, which was actually a nice touch.  Kind of tortilla-ish.  Which took me here:

Quesadillas!

This is super easy.  Sautee onions, garlic and bell pepper in a little olive oil.  Add canned black beans.  Season with salt, oregano, cumin and chili pepper.  Again, put the dough in the oven for 5 min before filling.  Fill add cheese and bake another 5 minutes.

Both dishes were superb.