We love good food around our house, and as excited as we get about a new shop tool.... creating or finding the perfect, quality kitchen tool is something we appreciate.
In our day of hectic lifestyles ( and we get it, time is a precious commodity) it seems the inclination is to too often resort to convenience or processed foods or eating out. However, nutrition and variety are often the first resulting sacrifices in our food prep and consumption.
There's something deeply satisfying about the feel of a well implemented saute spoon or spatula in your hand.........or dusting flour on an oversized pastry board in preparation for rolling out dough.......or the weight of a finely crafted, wood Peppermill in your hand as you season a sauce or soup. And most importantly, whether the simplest of fare or a complex recipe, homemade just tastes better.
Over the past couple of years we began to make our own pizza from scratch as opposed to ordering out. We tried using store-bought prepared crusts ( a couple of decent types) as our base, and then moved on to prepared dough we purchased from a local grocery store........neither were bad.......the prepared dough a bit superior.......but still we were missing that perfect crust; at least until we stumbled across a flatbread crust recipe that is now our standard "go to". It's consistently delicious, always crisp and thin ( as we like it) and super easy to make.
Credit where credit is due:). Here's the link for this wonderful crust:
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/flatbread-dough-0
We use our imagination for topping this gem of a crust, everything from simple prosciutto and goat cheese to jerk chicken with special sweet and hot Caribbean sauce. Whatever we throw on it, the result is consistently excellent.
Like we said, making use of quality and well fitted kitchenware is one of our particular pleasures. As a carpenter, you already know how much a new shop tool excites me, but we find similar satisfaction in finding the perfect kitchen tool matched to a task.
Never having working in a true "pizzeria", we sadly aren't proficient in hand-tossing our pizza crust:). That said, we find our oversized wooden cutting board/pastry board coupled with a great rolling pin gets the job done. Good pizza crust rolling requires a bit of work..... a sort of arm workout sans the gym:). It's a satisfying process.
No, that's not pizza dough.........those are biscuits..... but you get the idea:)
If you're game to try your hand at it.......and trust us, it's not that challenging or even terribly time consuming..... the results are more than worth it....
You might enjoy giving one of our finely crafted French rolling pins a go to roll out your crust. These beauties are hand turned out of fine hardwoods.
When you take the time to start with quality ingredients and couple them with the right, well crafted tool, cooking can become a far more satisfying experience than what normally transpires in our busy day to day lives.
Trust us. The results are worth it:)
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