Pizza for Lunch, Pizza for Dinner & Pizza for Breakfast

A good pizza out can you get you all worked up and inspired. We had gone to the Crocker Art Museum and took a tour led by the docent. We got hungry and eventually ended up getting pizza (imagine that!) at a place we had tried to get into before but to no avail. This time we succeeded. The pizza place was the one I had mentioned earlier in the previous blog called Chicago Fire. We left Chicago Fire all fired up and inspired and ready to go home and make some new pizzas. Before we headed home we detoured over to Barnes & Nobles and found a few books on pizza that interested us. We came home and ordered them on Amazon and then went to work on a pizza we had both read about. It has a name but basically it is a potato pizza with Gorgonzola on it. I believe it was Peter Reinhart, one of the Legends of Pizza who said that pizza is the perfect flavor delivery system. I couldn't agree more. That makes perfect sense. A tortilla is the method to bring you cheese, beef, chicken, salsa etc. Bread is a method to bring you peanut butter, ham & cheese, garlic and butter etc. etc. A well made pizza crust serves the same purpose. The toppings are only limited by our imagination.

We pulled out one of Albert Grande's pizza doughs that I had proofed in the fridge. Let it warm up while we went to Starbucks in the evening, skipping dinner since we were still full from lunch. (Now remember, we already had pizza once today). We boogied over to Nugget at 9:45 at night and picked up some Yukon Gold potatoes and some Gorgonzola crumbled cheese.

I cranked up the oven to 550º and precooked a few potatoes in the microwave while Sheri sliced some onions and peeled and crushed some garlic. Sheri ran out to the herb garden out back with a flashlight and picked some rosemary and oregano. After lightly coating the dough with some of Sciabica's garlic olive oil, we assembled it and shoved it into the oven. Ten minutes later we were eating a pizza that tasted more like a Cornish Pasty than a typical Italian style traditional pizza. Talk about comfort food at 11:30 at night! To top it off, it was actually a vegetarian pizza and I didn't even miss the fact that it was meatless!

I love going to bed with a happy stomach. The next morning, with only 3 slices left, we reheated it with some fried bacon on top and a fried egg placed over each slice. What a great breakfast

pizza that became! Presley, our Golden Retriever and genuine pizza lover, enjoyed the end crusts as they got a bit tough after reheating them. This was definitely a pizza I would do again and one I would do for guests as well. We put our twist on the recipes and made it personal to our tastes. How come the Irish didn't think of this? Oh and BTW, the dough was perfect Albert! Thanks!