Pizza for two

Since I have have a long weekend off for the Thanksgiving holiday I'm doing a little extra cooking for the freezer. Yesterday I made a red bean soup with ham and collards and froze 3 quarts. Today I spent the morning making pizza crusts for the freezer.

I learned the secret to good homemade pizza crust a couple of years ago when I was shopping at a little bulk food store. Among the of barrels of flour was a barrel of semolina flour. I had never seen it before, but the yellow grainy flour fascinated me. It looked a lot more like cornmeal than flour. I asked the owner what it was used for. Pizza crusts, he said. He I quizzed him on ratios and recipes and he admitted he really didn't know any thing about baking. The only reason he knew it was used for pizza crust was because the pizza shops in town would sometimes buy the flour from him when they were in a pinch and had run out their supply. I bought a couple of pounds and brought it home to experiment.

With a little experimenting, it seems that about the right ratio is 1/4 semolina flour to 3/4 wheat flour. It makes a crunchy light crust. I'd post a recipe except that I really don't have one. Well, I do sort of, but I have no idea of amounts. I have an idea of rations in my head and just sort of make the rest up as I go. Every now and then my husband will watch me as I mix up bread and comment that it really is amazing that everything I make usually turns out. I am very much an intuitive baker and have a very difficult time following bread recipes even when I try hard to do so. Actually any recipe that has more than a couple of steps is usually a little beyond me.

That said, if you want to make pizza, just take any basic bread recipe (flour, salt, water, yeast, oil, and just a little bit sugar (no more than a table spoon or two) and substitute semolina flour for 1/4 of the wheat flour and olive oil for what ever oil the recipe calls for. You should be able to make a fabulous pizza dough that way. I always use whole wheat bread flour. Because I don't follow an exact recipe mine always turns out slightly different each time. Today's dough was really beautiful--very springy and elastic, the type of dough that is a joy to work with.

I make the crusts small enough to fit in gallon ziplock freezer bag. That is actually just the perfect size for a pizza for two. I bake each crust until it is just starting to brown along the edges. Then they are cooled and popped in the freezer. After a long day at work, all I have to do is thaw the crust in microwave, pour some hot pasta sauce over it, and cover with toppings and put in a 400 degree oven. Five minutes later the cheese is melted and the pizza is ready to eat.