Cake for Breakfast: Pizza Party

Maureen and Erin came over for the Pizza Party Part I (Part II to follow on the 25th). We started out with watermelon, mint, and feta appetizers:

Then moved on to pan-roasted garbanzo beans. Cherry and I were sympathizing with each other because we both bought gargantuan bundles of fresh garbanzo beans which are fun for the first few hours of shucking, but not so fun after that. Luckily Cherry found they could be pan-roasted and served like edamame. Leave two cups garbanzo beans in their pods. Rinse, and shake off excess water. Put in a hot pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Cover. Roast for 5-8 minutes, shaking pan occasionally. Put them in a bowl and toss with lots of salt. Mmmm.

One of our pizza toppings was bechamel, ricotta, and spinach. I just wanted to remind you what good spinach looks like:

First out of the oven was our margherita pizza. The crust was the most perfect I've had it from a home oven. I tried a new recipe from the bread bakers apprentice that calls for far less yeast and a much longer proofing time than anything I've tried before.

Mix 4 1/2 Cups AP flour with 1 teaspoon yeast and 1 teaspoon salt. Add 2 cups of water. Using your hand like a dough hook (or an actual dough hook) knead the dough for 8 minutes. It is really sticky, but that's okay. Shape it into six balls.Roll the balls in oil and put them on a half sheet pan covered with parchment paper. Put the whole thing in a plastic back (i used a garbage bag) and refrigerate overnight or up to 4 days. You can also freeze the balls at this point. I put my oven at 550 and let my pizza stone preheat for two hours. I did not put it directly on the bottom of the oven, as most books suggest, because I've had bad results doing that in this oven (though it worked fine in my last oven) so I put it on a rack on the lowest setting and it worked perfectly.