The Food of Life

I just thought I might share some pictures of my first pizza from scratch in... I don't even know how many years. So it came out alright, i should have stretched the dough out a bit more because it came out kind of thick but all in all not too shabby. The dough was from a recipe book i had that was about 1/2 cube of butter, salt, sugar, all purpuse flour, 3 egg yolks. I also tossed in some garlic, onion salt, and rosemary. The topping is just olive oil sea salt (very light) roma tomatos, mozerella cheese and some parsley flakes ( i would have used basil, but i didn't have any, but i really like the green contrast color)

One of my absolute favorite things to make is bruschetta. I probably never make it exactly the same way twice, and it will really depend on what i have in the fridge. This is actually probably one of my favorite things to eat for dinner too. It's simple, quick and easy and really filling. So first the bread, I typically make my own baguettes, and because i like to bake more than I like to eat (looks are deceiving aren't they ;-)) bread has a way of going stale on me; especially since it has no preservatives in it. So when my baguettes start to go bad i know it's bruschetta time. You don't have to make your own bread to do this, if you want to try it, go to your local grocery store and get a medium sized baguette and go to town (it's gotta be big enough to put the toppins on when it's cut).

Okay, so first I mix a bowl of Extra virgin olive oil, and some Balsamic vinegar. We could spend all day talking about these 2 things, so we won't... yet. Anywhoo i use a ration of about 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 balsamic vinegar. Set that aside

Cut the bread. At a diagonal angle start cutting your baguette, you want them to be oval like in shape and however thick you want them, i like about 1/4". line them up on a baking sheet, they can be touching. Now we bake them for a bit, just to get them golden brown. 350 degress about 7 minutes each side on the middle rack i think. Just get them golden brown. We bake them so that when we slop em up with our topping they don't get soggy. When they're done just pull them out and set them aside.

Tomato. Yum. Okay I am a freakshow about roma tomatoes. I love these things. I just slice these guys in thin rings and i use 1 slice per bread slice. So match em up and set em aside.

Cheese. You can just use a bagged shredded mozerealla and some pre shredded parmesean also. It's quick and easy.

Basil, I like to cut basil leaves into thin strips. Basil matches real well with the olive and vinegar and tomato and cheese, plus it adds a neat contrasting color with the red tomato the browned bread, the white brown cheese. If you don't have basil i will sometimes use parsley flakes in it's absense.

Now, you can either use a pastry brush to coat each of the baked bread bits, or what I do is basically slop the roma tomato int the mixture and then plop it onto the bread. I do 1 tomato for each bread slice. Then I take some sea salt and grind just a touch over the top. If you don't think the bread and tomato has enough "sauce" then go ahead and as much as you like. Now sprinkle your cheese on top of the tomato. doesn't take much, moz melts and browns nice. Then just a dab of parm because i like the flava. :-) Shazam! Kick the oven onto broil toss those bad boys in and watch like a hawk! Should only take 2 or 3 minutes for those kids to get all hot and that cheese to melt. Once the moz starts to brown and bubble you are done! Pull em out sprinkle on your basil or Parsley and serve em up!!!

hopefully they look like this or better