A good garlicky chicken pizza is a thing of beauty. Something about the marriage of flavors just…works, you know? All that fresh garlic, sautéed in butter and thrown into a béchamel, it’s just lovely. There’s still a novelty to me, too, in using fresh garlic since I never touched one until I moved in with Warren years ago. Why use fresh when there’s garlic salt and garlic powder? That’s the Midwest for you. (not knocking it, I have both in my cupboard)

In spite of all of my good intentions with buying my groceries every two weeks, it has turned out to be only partly practical and I think I’m going to go once a week instead. What happens is that I end up with all this meat in the freezer that I forget to take out the night before, and it doesn’t have the same quality if you defrost it in the microwave as it does if you let it defrost gently in the fridge. Then too, I forget which meals I planned use the most fresh produce and I end up wasting perfectly good Italian parsley and cilantro. Not so practical in this economy! In addition to that, my will to (live) cook is often determined by the moods of my children, so these days if they’ve been beasts we eat spaghetti or Hamburger Helper or Five Guys.

Wednesday was one of those nights, where I had forgotten for about 5 days in a row to take the pork out to marinate for some souvlaki, my ground beef was also in the freezer and we had spaghetti on Monday. And so I figured it was probably a good time to try out a chicken pizza, and I already knew of a good flatbread crust since, if you ask me, white sauced pizza needs thin crust.

Flatbread Crust:

adapted from Mario Batali

3  2.25 tsp packages active dry or instant yeast

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

Though by flour I mean all-purpose unbleached white flour, I see no reason you couldn’t substitute up to 1.5 cups with whole wheat flour. It would make an already chewy bread chewier, but it would certainly be healthier.

In a large bowl, combine yeast, water and sugar, stirring to dissolve.

Add salt and one cup of flour, and stir with a wooden spoon (honestly, plastic will do just fine if that’s what you’ve got, just make sure it’s sturdy) to make a loose batter. Add remaining 2 cups of flour and stir for a few minutes to get as much of the flour incorporated as possible.

Turn out onto a flat, lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, or until your dough comes together in a smooth ball.

(^^^what it looks like when you first bring it together, NOT what it looks like after you’ve completed kneading.)

If there are seams, lines, crevasses in your dough, don’t worry – from what I can tell, smooth refers more to the silky texture of the dough than it does having a perfectly uniform surface.

Drop it into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a towel or saran wrap and allow to rise in a warm spot for 45 minutes.

Remove from the bowl and split into 2 even amounts of dough. Flatten lightly into rounds, cover and let rise for 15 minutes.

While the recipe says to press into 10” rounds, I’m here to tell you I am just not that patient and I busted out my rolling pin for 13-14” circles. If you don’t have a rolling pin, consider a wine or other cylindrical bottle.  Now you have pizza dough and you can put whatever you want on it. Easy, right? 

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, with your pizza stone/terracotta flowerpot base/bottom of a cast iron skillet already in the oven. You want it to be hot and all three of the above are excellent for the purposes. (p.s, pizza stones are $10 at Wal-Mart right now.)

If you’re using chicken, this is a good time to cook it. I diced up two chicken breasts and cooked them in a little oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and oregano. If you had leftover rotisserie, this would be a great application for it.

White Sauce: (aka garlic béchamel!)

3 Tbsp flour

3 Tbsp butter

Seasonings to taste

(* depending on how garlicky you want)

Don’t let the fancy French name fool you – if you’ve ever made sausage gravy for biscuits, you’ve made béchamel. If you’ve made mac n’ cheese from scratch, you’ve probably made béchamel. It’s just a thickened milk sauce and the base of so many delicious things, which is probably why it’s one of the 4 mother sauces.

In a saucepan, melt your butter over medium heat. Add garlic and onions and sauté until soft, 3-5 minutes or so. Add flour and whisk until the flour and butter have melded, and continue to cook for 1 minute.

Slowly whisk in the milk until you get the desired consistency. I let mine thicken substantially, to like a runny gravy, if that makes any sense. While it’s simmering, add your seasonings – for me, I cheated and went with Italian seasoning mix, with some kosher salt and black pepper.

Pizza assemblage:

Pizza dough

Garlic sauce

Freshly ground black pepper

Grab your pizza baking surface from the oven (use mitts, it seems like a no brainer but just..trust me here) and slide your dough onto it. Grab a ladleful of sauce and spread over the surface. Sprinkle on chicken and tomatoes, cover with cheese. Toss some pepper on and throw it into the oven for 12-14 minutes. Enjoy!

Julia Child’s White Bread

You Will Need:

2.5 cups water (between 105 – 115 F)

1 Tbsp active dry yeast

1 Tbsp sugar

7 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp salt

1/4 – 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

You Will Do:

Pour 1/2 cup of the water into a bowl and mix with yeast and sugar til foamy. Let sit for 5 minutes until creamy. (note to baking noobs: instead, just combine the water, yeast and sugar and then let it sit for 5 minutes, it’ll be foamy and creamy without stirring – see below).

Put the yeast mixture, rest of the water and 3.5 cups of flour into the mixer with the dough hook attached. Mix slowly until blended then add the rest of the flour. Increase the speed and scrape down the sides til the dough comes together (if it doesn’t come together, add a Tbsp of flour at a time until it does).  Add salt and mix at medium speed for 10 minutes til dough is smooth and elastic.

Add butter 1 Tbsp at a time (don’t be alarmed if your dough comes apart! Mixing will put it back together)

Turn dough out on a lightly floured surface and shape it into a ball then place in a large buttered or oiled bowl. Turn dough so it is completely coated in the fat, then cover in plastic or with a dishtowel for 45 minutes to an hour, til it has doubled in size at room temperature. Meanwhile, butter 2 loaf pans.

After dough has risen, deflate, cut in half and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out a 9 x 12” rectangle, and with the short end facing you fold the dough into thirs, like a letter prepped for an envelope, creating a roll. Pinch the seam closed, and pinch the ends enough that it will fit in the loaf pan. (I tucked mine under, personally) Place into the pan seam-side down, recover and allow to rise a second time in a warm place for 45 minutes or until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 375 F, making sure oven rack is in the center of the oven. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until they’re honey brown. Immediately turn out of pans to cool on a rack.

First, let me just say that while I thought this was a good recipe to start with, in hindsight I’m not sure it was. I’m not sure if it was the reinterpretation of the instructions (it’s a dupe on Recipezaar) or what, but I could not get that yeast to foam with all the stirring in the world. So in frustration I went to research yeast and when I came back to it, it had foamed. So apparently the secret is not in stirring but in being patient.

Second, I cut my recipe in half because I felt like 7 cups of flour was insane and I didn’t think I needed two loaves. I’m not sure I did it right, because while the bread tasted just fine it was very dense and heavy for a loaf of white bread – I’m used to a softer, airier variety and have since found a recipe that more closely echoes my expectations.

Third, I really believe the preparation here is overly complicated. You don’t need to roll it out, it just needs to be pressed down lightly and shaped into a loaf. You have to go really light with the flour while you’re forming your loaf else your seams won’t pinch. You don’t need a heavy coat of fat in the bowl, just enough to lightly cover the dough and prevent it from sticking post-rise. In fact, I would say a wash of butter or milk on top right before you chuck it in the oven would give the same effect – fat browns, and that’s what gives your bread that golden brown crust.

That said, I totally lost my bread-making virginity on this recipe and all the frustration was ultimately worthwhile. I have made two other recipes since this one and refuse to be intimidated by bread flour again.