Pizza Party

Want to see what we had for dinner tonight?



Oh, yes. Here, take another look, get a little closer...



In my copious free time (you know, when I'm not showering) I decided to make my own sourdough starter. It's been living on my counter for the last two weeks growing and maturing into this:



Yummy. It's flour and water left to capture wild yeasts in the air and become a living, breathing sourdough starter. After two weeks it is active enough to use in sourdough recipes - it's a wonderful alternative to commercial yeast. It's kind of like a pet. I feed it every day (flour and water) and let the air out of the bag and stir it around. It's like having a third kid. That lives on the kitchen counter. And doesn't poop. But once I didn't leave it an airhole when I went to bed and the next morning I found it had popped its bag and oozed out into its bowl. Oops.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot on how to make your own starter and recipes to use with it and I came across the Cheese Board Collective Works book - let me back up. The Cheese Board is a shop in the Gourmet Ghetto area of Berkeley - on the corner is the cheese and bread and such and two doors down is their pizza shop where they make THE BEST PIZZA ON THE PLANET. Every day they make just one type of pizza and people line up down the block to get some. I used to eat there all the time. So good. Unbelievably good. SO, I made my own starter (Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery book has lots of wonderful information if you're thinking of doing it yourself) and today it had just finished maturing so I decided to make something with it - and thought aiming impossibly high by trying to replicate the best pizza on the planet would be a great way to start out my first sourdough experience.

I made a zucchini, onion, corn, mozzarella, Feta pizza topped with cilantro and a bit of lime juice. With a garlic olive oil dressing drizzled on the crust. OHMYGOD. It was impossibly good. Just like they make at The Cheese Board. And the crust was wonderful. Full of little holes and big holes. Crunchy on the the outside and soft of the inside. A sourdough dough needs a lot longer to rise than a commercial yeast dough and so it develops a character and depth you can't get with a packet of Fleischmann's instant yeast.

Anyway, I'm just giddy that my sourdough starter survived to maturity and my first meal was such a success. And if you're ever in the neighborhood and want to take some starter home, I'd be happy to share!