Design Your Own Pizza Party
After the purchase of aforementioned oven and stand mixer, I put them to good use at the Design-Your-Own Pizza Party I hosted.
I discovered this recipe for pizza dough at King Arthur Flour's blog (click here for the description and pictures, click here for the recipe). I've always trusted King Arthur Flour's recipes, being the proud owner of their cookbook Whole Grain Baking. This pizza recipe conveniently calls for you to parbake the pizza crust before adding the toppings. Perfect for a design-your-own pizza party! I parbaked all of the crusts in advance, so that folks didn't have to wait 15-20 minutes between pizzas or deal with a floppy pizza to put in the oven, or get their hands gross by handling wet, sticky dough.
I asked people to bring a topping or a beverage, and I was really happily surprised that folks really got into it! Contributions ranged from a basil plant to artichoke hearts to corn. I set up my rolling carts from Ikea into a pizza making buffet line with all of the different toppings. In total we made 8 pizzas.
For the party, I made four batches of pizza dough from the recipe, and that yielded 12 crusts of about 8" diameters. This one is definitely being added to the repertoire of party themes!
