This pizza dough is made with a cup of beer instead of water and it makes a big difference in the flavour, in my opinion. I use my bread machine to mix it up but you can make it in a big bowl too. Sometimes we don't make the dough and just buy dough from the bakery section of the grocery store. No shame in that, either!
Pizza Dough
(makes two thin crust pizzas)
1 cup beer
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 cups flour
1 tbsp dry yeast
If using a bread machine, just put in all the ingredients, choose the dough setting and walk away.
Or, you can: measure the beer into a measuring cup and warm it for about 1 minute in the microwave. Pour the warm beer into a bowl. Drink the remaining cold beer from the bottle (very important step, haha). Add the sugar and yeast to the bowl and stir to dissolve. Stir in the flour and salt. Form the dough into a ball (best done with your hands). Place in a large, lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest for about 30 minutes to an hour.
When the dough is ready, cut it into two pieces. Roll, stretch and press the dough into a lightly oiled, round pizza pan. Or you can roll it out on a pizza stone, in which case I don't use any oil, just a generous sprinkle of cornmeal to prevent any sticking.
Now it's ready for your favourite toppings. The photo above shows a pizza made with pesto, shredded chicken, mushrooms, goat cheese and a little mozzarella (to hold all the toppings together nicely). I added some freshly ground pepper on top and it was so good. We ate the leftovers cold for breakfast the next morning. I also like chicken, bacon, mushroom, and caramelized onion, with mozzarella and a little sprinkle of asiago. The salty bacon and sweet onion are just meant to be together on a pizza.
These biscuits always turn out and they taste about 200 times better than any biscuits you can buy. They're definitely worth it to make at home. You can mix it together with a fork and a pastry blender (to cut in the butter), but I like to use my food processor.
Making light, flaky biscuits depends on using cold butter, and the method of mixing them. If you use a food processor, you don't want the butter to be completely blitzed to smithereens. There should be some pieces about the size of peas, and some smaller pieces - "coarse crumbs" as most recipes will say. When they bake in a really hot oven, those irregular sized pieces of butter will create moist little pockets of steam inside the biscuits as they rise and bake, which create the flaky texture. I read this in a cookbook somewhere a long time ago...seems to make sense. So if you use a food processor, be careful not to over-process the dough or your biscuits will turn out flat. And nobody likes flat biscuits.
(Speaking of flat biscuits, I once made these with a stone-ground flour that I got from a local mill. They didn't rise. At all. They were hard and dry and pretty awful...and my husband ate them anyway. What a guy.)
We eat these biscuits a lot in the winter with chili and stews. My kids love them for breakfast, warmed for a minute in the toaster and spread with butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar.
Buttermilk Biscuits
(adapted from Better Homes and Gardens)
3 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup cold butter, cubed
1 1/4 cups buttermilk (or 1 cup regular milk if you don't have buttermilk)
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cream of tartar. Process until well mixed.
Add the cold butter cubes. Pulse a few times, just until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces. Add the milk and pulse a few more times, just until the dough forms a rough ball.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface. Gently knead the dough by folding and pressing it about 4-5 times. Lightly roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick. With a round cookie cutter or a juice glass, cut rounds about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for about 10-12 minutes or until biscuits are golden on top.
When I was little, my mom made rolled sugar cookies for every holiday: hearts for Valentine's Day, bunnies and chicks for Easter, pumpkins and witches for Halloween, candy canes and reindeer for Christmas, and so on. I try to do this for my kids whenever I can.
The secret to making tender, melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies is to handle the dough very gently when mixing in the flour. Too much beating will make the cookies tough. Also, my mom rolls the dough between two sheets of parchment paper instead of using flour to prevent them from sticking. I do use a sprinkle of flour on the countertop when I roll out the dough, but just barely enough to keep them from sticking. I find that I can use less flour if I use well chilled dough (at least a couple of hours in the fridge).
Sugar Cookies
(makes about 2-3 dozen cookies, depending on cookie cutters)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 egg
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
To decorate: Vanilla Buttercream (half recipe), coloured sprinkles
Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the centre of the oven. Beat together the sugar, butter, vanilla and almond extracts, and egg. Stir in flour, baking soda and cream of tartar. Shape the dough into a ball; press it down to form a more or less flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Cut chilled dough into four equal pieces. Between two sheets of parchment paper (or on a lightly floured surface), roll one piece of dough until it's about 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes and bake about 8-10 minutes or until cookies are set (they should not be golden brown). Let cool; frost and decorate with sprinkles.
