I think I request pizza pretty much every time I'm at home now, but really who doesn't want pizza? He made extremely loaded pizza for Christmas Eve. That was pretty traditional pizza with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. But this time, he was up for an experiment in the form of an attempt to recreate a Murrieta's flatbread he had once in Canmore at home. Needless to say he was impressed by the restaurant's creation. I believe it must have been the "Chorizo" with sun dried tomatoes, roasted mushrooms, black olives, and goat cheese. Incidentally, he must have forgotten about the mushrooms since he didn't suggest including any. But, what do you expect from a guy who persists in calling chorizo "chorozo"? Anyways, mushrooms or none, my dad makes a mean pizza and the experiment was a success.
I was semi-involved in the process so I'll tell you more or less how it went down:
My dad prepared a sauce of fresh Roma tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper. He put it in the fridge until we were ready for the pizza making. He also cooked up some Spolumbo's chorizo sausages and sliced them and let them brown nicely. I think these were also chilled until the main event.
Next, came the magic I know not as he made a whole wheat pizza dough crust. This was actually the first time I had his pizza in it's new whole wheat form and it was a winner with more flavour than a white crust. I also know that the crust utilized the fine buckwheat honey we bought at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto in place of sugar. The honey flavour was too subtle for me to notice despite using the "Guinness of honeys," buckwheat honey.
The oven was preheated to 450 F with a ceramic pizza stone inside while the pizzas were prepared. The tomato sauce was spread over the dough, which was shaped by hand. Next the topping were arranged on top including sausage slices, strips of sun dried tomato, and pieces of kalamata olive. Finally, large crumbles of soft goat cheese were added. We to reconstitute the sun dried tomatoes in boiling water for 2 minutes and pit the olives. To pit the olives my dad smashed them with the side of a knife like you would with garlic. It really makes the pits easier to remove.
This is the pizza before baking on a sheet metal pizza paddle with cornmeal for easy transfer to the stone in the oven:
And this is the delectable pizza after baking. . . a little longer than my dad wanted to 'cause I like a crisp crust:
It was really good and different from the usual pizza. There was much less cheese but the cheese that was on the pizza was creamy, tangy, perfect goat cheese. The crust was crisp and tasty with it's light smearing of fresh tomato sauce. The toppings: olives, sun dried tomatoes, and chorizo were all very flavourful. Needless to say, I did my part in eating the pizza. My dad was disappointed with the minimal leftovers with me home and eating pizza.For the record, my mom also makes great food. I couldn't get enough of her Caesar salad the night before we returned to Edmonton.
