Today there is a Pizza Party around the world that is being hosted by Zoë François and Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. , the authors of “Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day.”

For the last year or so, Rick and I have been working on a wood fired pizza oven in our back garden. So this was a fun event to unveil the (almost) completed oven and share this great book with you too. To family and friends who have been (patiently) waiting for a pizza party- it’s on its way- I promise.     We’ve just been working on the practical aspects of using the oven. The doughs in the book will be helpful because we can mix up different batches of dough without a lot of time or effort and have them on hand for when the time is right to fire up the oven.

I have a separate post planned for when the last bit is complete on the oven to show you how we made it  and the different stages of completion- so more on that later. Right now let’s party with some pizza!

First gather the book and a few ingredients. I used four litre buckets to mix each dough in,  instead of the 5 quarts recommended because it was either them or a 6 qt which takes up too much space in my fridge.  So here are the ingredients. I made the “00″ flour variation of the Ultimate Tender Neopolitan Crust from page 73- because I happen to have about 40 lbs of Caputo “00″ flour from Central Milling on hand. It’s in the 5 Gallon bucket with the red lid pictured. The blue crock is my salt cellar.

I also made the “Cornmeal Olive Oil dough” on page 86, although I substituted purple cornmeal for the yellow listed. I know- I’m a rebel. Plus I had some to use up.  :)

I like to use my King Arthur (thingamajig)  mixing tool that my sister, Tonya, gave to me a few years ago for mixing things up in the buckets. It works great! Funny note:It’s in a gift box on their site featured with Bread in 5′s book.

This is what the doughs look like after raising and being chilled overnight:

So fire up the oven…

Rick just finished the spire on top of the onion dome. There is more to do but it works and more on the pizza oven to come in a later post.

It makes a great fire.

Toppings:

San Marzano tomatoes that I bottled this Summer from our garden, whizzed in the blender with a little salt and then strained make a delicious sauce.

I make pesto during the summer and freeze it in flexible ice cube trays. Just thaw and use.

Cubed Turkey Breast, Goat cheese, Brie, Ricotta,  Fresh and shredded Mozzarella, BBQ sauce, San Marzanos, pesto, homemade Bechamel, Ambrosia Apple, artichoke hearts, cooked sweet Italian sausage and pepperoni, shallots, onions and red peppers.

Prepared Margherita, San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh Mozzarella on "00" dough

Margherita out of the oven and topped with fresh Basil from the windowsill

Prepared Apple, Bechamel and Brie on Cornmeal Olive Oil Crust

After the fire:Turkey Breast on BBQ Sauce Before and after:

An “Italian Flag” one third each Margherita, Pesto and Bechamel Ricotta Before and after firing:

This is an "Italian Flag" before cooking

I had another pizza and some wood fired Naan to show you but I’ve lost this post twice running out of room so I’ll save those for another day. Party on and check out the other parties over at the Artisan Bread in 5 site.

Enjoy!

Have you read Joy Bauer’s “Slim & Scrumptious” or”Food Cures”?

Joy Bauer is the New York Times best selling author and Nutrition Expert for the Today show. I have been really interested in improving my nutrition of late. So I think it was excellent timing that the folks over at her website JoyBauer.com contacted me and offered to send me two of her latest books to look over and also offered to give away 4 copies of one book to some of you lucky folks.

I love the Food Cures book – it’s a nutritional approach to improving your health through nutrition with ideas, recipes and supplements to support everything from beautiful skin to irritable bowel syndrome, cataracts and macular degeneration.

I must say however, that as a cook and foodie, I REALLY LOVE the “Slim & Scrumptious” book. It is full of over 75 recipes for delicious, healthy meals. This is the one up for grabs.

“Slim and Scrumptious features more than seventy-five recipes for every
meal and every taste. Whether you want Double Chocolate Pancakes or Eggs
Benedict for breakfast, Sesame Chicken Tenders or Spicy Pork Tacos with Sassy
Slaw for lunch, or Spice-Rubbed Flank Steak with Chimichurri and Creamy Spinach
for dinner, Joy shows you that classic, rich food can still be made to taste
great with just a fraction of the fat and calories. She also includes fun
snacks, desserts, and appetizers that will keep you satisfied all day long, such
as Cinnamon Cheesecake Fondue, Frozen Hot Chocolate, and Banana Pecan Bread.”

Our favourite of the recipes we have cooked so far are the Chicken Lettuce Wraps on page 103. They are yummy! The whole book is full of eye pleasing and nutritionally balanced dishes. So if you are interested in great food and health leave a comment here for a chance to receive a copy of “Slim & Scrumptious” by midnight Mountain time on  July 5th and you might be one of four chosen! (Sorry, this offer is open to residents of the USA or Canada only.)

I will choose four random people who leave a comment and notify each of you on July 6th. JoyBauer.com will mail the books directly to those random readers.

I admit I had never heard of a “Figolli” before Nanette of Gourmet Worrier invited me to participate in her “World Figolli Day” event. It turns out that they are a quite yummy traditional Easter treat from Malta.

Sort of a cross between a cookie and a hand pie, they are made from a citrus zest flecked,  egg yolk enriched, buttery short dough that sandwiches a delicious almond filling made fragrant with orange blossom water. You mix up the dough and chill it briefly, then roll it out very thinly, cut into shapes, spread the filling, then top with another cut out of the same shape. You bake them, cool them and then decorate them to your heart’s content.

I made lambs, sunflowers, eggs, butterflies and chicks using chocolate, butter-cream, white chocolate ganache and sanding sugar to decorate.

Lots of springtime fun here! You can find the full recipe at Nanette’s post here. I did add a splash of vanilla and almond extract to the filling- just to put them over the top.

Bob Harmon and Chef Bob Bryant

I have posted about Harmons before. I have shopped there for years,  I grew up with my Mum shopping there and I now actually drive past three or four other grocery stores to shop there. I have always valued the cleanliness, service and quality that they provide. Yesterday several other local food bloggers  and I were invited to a “back of the store tour” with Bob Harmon at the Harmons at Bangerter Crossing in Draper. Now I can add an understanding of the level they go to, to really provide their employees with the education and commitment to quality necessary to serve the customer. Plus the sourcing of products for freshness, selection and quality that I find unusual in any company- not just a grocery store- these days.

Bob Harmon started by welcoming us and introducing us to Chef Bob Bryant in the culinary education center where they offer all sorts of cooking classes.  He explained the desire of Harmons to have the best in products and quality for the customer and that Harmons had sent employees to Italy to Salone del Gusto -the slow food festival in Italy. While there they visited salumi, cheese and olive oil producers to really gain an understanding of the value of the food and methods of production of their vendors.  They also visited the best of the best in retail grocers and vendors nationwide as well, to see where they might exceed the standards of what was then available to their customers. I love this idea of investing in people and facilities to make the quality of the food available for me to purchase the very best it can be.

We visited with Shauna, the cheese department manager in the store who gave us a brief overview of the amazing selection of cheeses sourced and available to Harmons customers.

Rockhill Farms- a local cheese maker

Everything from huge wheels of Parmesan made just for them to local cheese makers such as Beehive Cheese Company and their award winning cheeses. There were also small farm cheeses from Utah and other regions of the USA- even a goat’s cheese from Alabama! 

On November 19th at 5-7pm they will be hosting a book signing with local salumi maker Cristiano Criminelli and author Tony Seichrist for the book “Meat, Salt, Time” written by Seichrist about Criminelli. They will be offering samples of limited edition salumi that night. Do not miss it.

Derick tests the Brix rating of some delicious grapes

Then we  met Derick, the produce manager who talked about their organic and local produce and gave us samples of several items to try. They have a great selection of high quality, organic, local and in season produce. They buy all of the hot house tomatoes from a local grower so that we can have good tomatoes throughout the year. They buy local peaches in season giving us a reasonable chance to get a peach that actually tastes like a peach. They also don’t stack their produce too deep- putting out what they expect to sell in a day which means faster turnover and fresher produce for us. 

Right now they have fresh pistachios grown in Hurricane, Utah- get them before they are gone!  Derick says they will have Ambrosia apples in as soon as the harvest begins- these are my own favourites! BTW-We just tried the Honeycrisp apple they sent home with me and OMG so good- I have to add that to my list of favourite apples now.

On to the meat department where the department manager, Bruce, showed us their dry aged beef and told us about the quality of their beef-all USDA Prime or above.

They make many selections of burgers and something like thirteen varieties of sausages ground and prepared fresh in the stores with no MSG or additives.

Their chicken is high quality, hormone free and recipe ready- great news because poor quality chicken really bothers me. They offer organic and free range selections. The best thing they make in my humble opinion is a pork “spoon roast”.  (I’ve blogged about that before see here)

Next was the seafood department where Chris showed us their extremely fresh seafood- King crab legs that are fresh never frozen and flown in, great looking salmon, other fish varieties and shellfish.

They use chalk artists for these great signs

We watched Chris crack the crab legs and shuck the oysters then we sampled the crab and several of us tried a raw oyster and most of us loved it. The department smelled good, fresh and clean which is essential for me.

In the bakery the manager, Bre, a graduate of the CIA, and her staff make amazing pastry, cakes and bars.

We sampled a ginger cake and some caramel scotchies which were like millionaires shortbread- yummy. I must admit that I had purchased one of the scotchies the day before and shared it with Rick. We enjoyed it very much. I think their croissants are terrific and I had an almond one there before that I’ve been wanting to have again. I admit that I am terribly critical in this area and I am impressed.

Then we met with Jason, the lead Artisan Bread Baker for the store, who told us he had been sent to San Francisco twice by Harmons to study bread techniques.  Harmons’ bread is great – I buy it regularly. The sourdough is made in the traditional method with flour, salt and water and time as the only ingredients.

A lovely baker and beautiful bread

They make baguettes, delicious whole-wheat multi-grain, Country French, Baci and multi-grain rolls, white chocolate pecan  and Ciabatta every day and specialty breads that rotate on each day of the week. They offer Challah on Fridays-plain, with sugar or sesame topped- it makes great french toast or a nice tea treat!

In the deli the manager, Mariah, gave us samples of some of the 40-60 items made fresh every day for sale.

They have everything from their best selling potato salad to quinoa salad to complete holiday meals for Thanksgiving- right down to freshly made cranberry sauce.

They have great cut up fruit selections made daily in the store, not provided from a broker so you don’t get all of the juice weeping out before you buy it .They also have a hot Asian and Mexican food bar and an amazingly fresh looking salad bar, hot fried or rotisserie chickens,  fresh local honey and nut butters. Really amazing- the quality and selection!

Oh now wait I haven’t gotten to the wood fired pizza oven with yummy looking Naples style pizza or the gelato bar. They make genuine gelato held in an Italian gelato case that is the right temperature for such a thing.

Back in the culinary center we all got to try tiny spoonfuls of the stracciatella (vanilla with threads of chocolate) and the pistachio gelatos which were rich, smooth and delicious and a pop in your mouth grapefruit sorbetto as a palate cleanser before our lunch prepared by Chef Bob.

He fed us delicious lentil salad from the deli, cut up fresh fruit highlighting the store’s selections and then a muffaletta that he had the bakery add a little rosemary and garlic to the ciabatta he used and made a delicious olive and red pepper relish to finish it off.

It was great but I must admit that I was stuffed by the time our dessert of blood orange sorbetto arrived. I still finished my sorbetto though.

What I walked away with after the tour (besides a nice goody bag to sample -thank you very much!) was an appreciation of  the thought, effort and education that shouts commitment from this company. Thoughtfulness about what they can  bring to the market (literally) and the quality products  the can provide for their customers and the education and experience they can invest in their employees. As an interesting side note, I found that over 10% of their employees have been with them for 20 years or longer- made me want to go work for them myself!

The view from upstairs

Hey I even appreciate that when they remodelled the customer bathrooms they made every effort to make them comfortable, clean, green and private.  I admit it- I’ll be Harmons customer forever.

Thanks for a lovely tour!