An afternoon baking with Sue

Yesterday early afternoon Sue and I had a baking date. We started off with making ricotta cheese, then proceeded making sourdough pizza dough, baked 2 pizzas for lunch, and ended the session mixing batter for Citrus Ricotta Almond cookies.

fresh sage, button shiitake mushroom & baby zucchini

roasted garlic & soft asiago cheese

Sue brought beautiful roasted garlic bathed in olive oil which she roasted herself, soft Asiago cheese from Farmer Joe’s Marketplace in Oakland, as well as baby spinach & fresh basil (the last two items are not pictured  here.)  I contributed these beautiful finds: button shiitake mushroom, baby zucchini and fresh sage which I purchased at Milk Pail Market just the day before.

Sue made 2 different blends of topping on the same pizza dough.  She placed roasted garlic & drizzled the olive oil, in which the garlic was roasted, all over the whole dough.  On one half  she put thin slices of soft Asiago cheese followed with dried cranberry on top.  On the other half she spread some homemade tomato sauce, and dotted cubes of mozzarella cheese and a few button shiitake mushroom.

drizzling garlic-roasted olive oil goodness

spreading homemade tomato sauce

cranberry on Asiago half, vegetables on other, drizzling some more oil goodness

Sue was being quite Jackson Pollock in assembling the pizza:

pizza two ways and various toppings

The dough’s quite well dressed and ready to go into the oven, baked for about 5 minutes at 550 degrees F.

ready for the oven

After that we removed the parchment paper so the crust’s bottom cooked better; here we added baby spinach and basil leaves and baked again briefly for a few more minutes.  Et voilà Sue’s masterpiece:

pizza two in one

And here is my own pizza with slightly different toppings:

ready-for-bake sourdough pizza

sourdough pizza with a few toppings

Sue really enjoyed her pizza and save a slice to go to share with her father.  I also send with Sue a frozen pizza dough so she can bake one at home to treat her roommates who adore thin-crust-sourdough-pizza.

Update:  A week later, Sue and her gourmet roomies confirmed that the homemade sourdough crust pizza tastes just as good as those offered at their favorite bakery Arizmendi  in Emeryville.  That’s good to know and I will have to stop by Arizmendi to find out for myself.