Pizza Party Daring Bakers Style! Vegan MoFo Day 30

Because I kept putting off the October challenge, I ended up re-living a Grad School nightmare of waiting until the deadline, and then because life gets in the way, missing it! I was really excited about this challenge, making pizza! We were to use the pizza dough recipe from one of my favorite books, Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Our mission : use the “Pizza Napoletana” recipe to make our pizzas, and I was thrilled because while I’ve made my own pizza before, I still hadn’t tried that one from the book. I have loved everything I’ve made from Apprentice, and this delicious dough is no exception!

But back to the challenge… well, life just kept getting in the way of the Shellyfish and her pizza-filled future. This type of meal is definitely one reserved for a weekend evening so that my little family can have fun and gather around a table set with various toppings. The thing is, our weekends just kept getting all filled up…which is lovely, but made pizza planning difficult. Then, this past weekend, catastropha! We were hit with an icky stomach-flu thing that made all food rather icky looking. Luckily I had banked a few blog entries for the Vegan Month of Food, or Vegan MoFo as it’s better known with the cool kids, because I couldn’t have written about food (or looked at food which is why I have been a bit behind in commenting on your blogs – sorry!). But now the Fish Family is back in action and you’d better watch out because tonight we were pizza making fools!

Part of this month’s challenge was to be photographed tossing our dough. Monsieur Fish was getting very frustrated because the light was horrible in our kitchen at 8 p.m. and it was impossible to take my picture without it being too blurry, but I told him blurry was a good thing. I’m shy.

I just made the most amazing catch ever!

We love making pizza at home. This crust was the easiest crust I’ve ever made, and it was also mighty delicious. Crazy delicious. I have a tiny little stove which would probably be illigal in North America – I mean, the thing looks like someone built in out in their garage or something. There is only enough room for one cookie sheet and I can’t get it hot enough for “a real pizza crust”, so I improvise. I just put the sheet on the bottom of the stove, which has indeed warped the odd cookie sheet, but works really well.

Here’s a very blurry, badly lit photo of a most delicious pizza :

Roasted red pepper strips, sautéed mushrooms and toasted pine nuts. Woot!

I used my Great Grandmother Antonia’s Garlic Gravy for the base, which always works so well for pizza sauce because it’s wonderfully flavourful without being too thick- which is key to keeping your crust nice and crispy. Pizza night is the most fun kind of night – especially when you’re actually hugry for solid foods! Sorry for the poopy pictures, but I wanted to get this challenge up as soon as possible, and we were way more into eating and making pizzas than taking picutres!

The lovely and talented Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums hosted this month’s challenge. I’d like to say a special thank you to her as she ended up hosting solo. Due to the sudden, tragic death of her co-hostess Sher of What did you eat? she was on her own. I didn’t know Sher who died of a heart-attack this past summer, but I know she was a well-loved food blogger, and a wife, mother and daughter. I was fortunate enough to be on vacation in the U.S. with my own mother, a multiple heart-attack survivor, when I learned of Sher’s passing and it reminded me yet again of how precious “family time” really is. I think that this challenge, which was a a fun family meal that had the three of us, Guppy and M. Fish in stiches (the 3-year-old tosses pizza dough like nobody’s business!) is a beautiful testimony to the memory of Sher and her love of life.

If you haven’t already made the rounds on the Daring Bakers Blogroll, get moving people!