Friday, April 14, 2017

Beau Jo's Colorado Style Pizza


We've been making pizza almost every week. Our crust recipe is the same recipe we've been using for years.  We had everything ready for pizza night when I decided I wanted to make a Beau Jo's crust.  We ended up freezing the other pizza dough balls and made more pizzas the following week.

The recipe is adapted from a pizza making forum. https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=18368.0  I decreased the amount of dough slightly because I didn't want mountain pie size crust.  Don't get me wrong.  I love pizza crust but I was feeling like a little piggy.  Beau Jo's is famous for the super thick crusts on their mountain pies. It's tradition to save the crust pieces and drizzle with honey. Beau Jo's leaves bottles of Colorado honey on their tables. We had our crust with Madhava honey from Lyons, Colorado.

We usually bake our pizzas on a cast iron pizza pan but for this pizza, you'll need a perforated pizza pan.  We happen to have an old one. We went ahead and left the cast iron pizza pan in the oven and placed the perforated pizza pan on cast iron pan to help it maintain the high temp.

Ingredients:
6 cups flour (all purpose or 50/50 all purpose & whole wheat)
2 - 2 1/4 cups water (heated to approximately 105 degrees)
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon kosher salt
black pepper

Add all ingredients to bowl and knead with dough hook for approximately 5 minutes. Divide dough into two balls and cover.  Allow to rise 30 minutes. Roll dough 1 to 2 inches larger than pizza pan. Dock (poke holes) the dough, braid the crust, sauce, cheese, toppings.  Bake in 500 degree preheated oven. We usually preheat the oven for about an hour and bake on a cast iron pizza pan.


The crust is still pretty thick but not on Beau Jo's scale.


Things I've eaten lately:

Fruit Strudel from Hans & Harry. The Bavarian cream is amazing.

Quick fried rice with shrimp and Chinese sausage. I like Sriracha but I don't seem to use it often enough.

One of our current favorite snacks.

I prepped a week's worth of salads. Each large container has several smaller containers filled with pumpkin seeds, chopped dates, feta cheese, fresh corn kernels, and chopped almonds.
I wasn't paying attention when I bought the pre-cooked beets. I grabbed the smoky variety. I didn't care for the smoky flavor. The dinosaur kale is from our garden. I pulled all but two plants to make room for tomato plants.
Same salad, no beets but added cornbread croutons.

Chicken shawarma, tabbouleh salad, garlicky tahini yogurt sauce made with Karoun yogurt, lettuce, tomatoes, and pita bread.

The shawarma recipe is from https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017161-oven-roasted-chicken-shawarma. Sam Sifton's recipe is legit.

Hubby wanted pistachio cake for his birthday.



Sourdough buttermilk waffles because I cannot toss starter.

Chocolate cake from 85 degrees bakery.  It's in my trunk with the tomato plants, hanging flower pots, purple gladiolus and Persian buttercup bulbs, and peony and poppy seeds.

I'm not usually a fan of taro but the taro bun from 85 degrees is really tasty.
For some reason I wanted mall food court teriyaki chicken.  I ate some at the food court in North County Fair and it was pretty good.

The recipe says Shaoxing wine but a sherry can be used.

The ingredients for the sauce.

This is American-style thick teriyaki sauce thickened with corn starch. 

The marinade is actually pretty simple. The only complicated part is "kneading" the chicken with a dough hook for like half an hour.

I marinated and "kneaded" the chicken the night before so that all we needed to do after work was cook the chicken veggies, and rice.

Sarku cooks their chicken on a really hot flat top grill. My options were non-stick griddle, non-stick grill (same as the griddle except it has the grill grooves), and a few cast iron pans/griddles. 

After I finished cooking the chicken, I cooked the veggies. Sarku's veggies consists of cabbage, carrots, and broccoli. I didn't have cabbage or broccoli so I used what I had in the crisper: asparagus, onions, zucchini, and tri-colored carrots.


I also didn't have plain short grain rice. There's so much rice (basmati, brown basmati, jasmine, brown jasmine, sticky, purple, brown medium grain, brown long grain) in the house I decided to go with the brown medium grain.

It was pretty good. Even with all the substitutions.

Donut Day again. I was trying to strap a few dozen to the roof of my car.

The fork in the road. I decided to go left.

The lake is up there somewhere.

Agave blossoms?

Finally made it to the lake.


Another one of my favorite snacks.  I didn't care for the strawberry flavor.

We had so much rain over the winter. 

That's Lake Poway.

It's baseball season!

The Norwegian salmon plate from Luna Grill. I was actually planning on working right through lunch because my interview schedule was 10:00 to 2:30 with 30 minutes for lunch. I apparently didn't read the email very thoroughly because my contact at the school wrote she was ordering lunch. I packed my lunch bag with clementines, raw almonds, crackers, peanut butter, and a Lara bar.

Red beans and rice. I usually make it with par-boiled rice but I didn't have any so I cooked up some Jasmine rice.

Breakfast at Hamburger Factory. I didn't eat the bacon.  The sourdough toast was actually pretty good.  It made me crave sourdough toast so today I went to Business Costco and bought a loaf of sourdough sandwich bread  (not an artisan sourdough boule) for toast. 

Sprouts is now carrying the Snacking Rounds. I think I'll try the Date Chia and the Apple Cinnamon next time. I like the smaller snacking rounds size over the morning rounds.

I tend to wear the same articles of clothes. I can't help it. I just gravitate towards what I feel comfortable in. I wear this pink UA jacket pretty often. Out of all my hoodies, sweatshirts, jackets, vests...it's the one I usually grab. It's the right amount of warmth for most outings and it's not bulky. I love this Marmot tank so much I just ordered another one. I initially ordered the tank and the shirt version in the same cut. I now have two of each. I also love the Run Times short from lululemon. I have it in a few colors. I'm wearing the black. In the previous post, I'm wearing the turquoise//aqua color. I also have the Speed shorts (which I believe is the shorter version of the Run Times) but I prefer the longer length even with my shorter legs. I also bought a few pairs of running shorts from Athleta that look very similar in cut to the Run Times but they are not as comfortable. I'm not brand loyal to lululemon. I'll wear anything as long as it's comfortable.