Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza #BreadBakers

Artichokes, tomato sauce, basil, mushrooms, ham and olives represent all four seasons in this Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza, with fresh mozzarella.

 

Over the years, we’ve enjoyed pizza in a lot of locations but our favorites are always thin flavorful crusts, baked in coal fired brick pizza ovens. Most of these were in Italian restaurants purporting to make authentic Neapolitan-style pizza. Unfortunately, that enviable crust is hard to recreate at home in a normal oven. 

I was intrigued by a recipe I read recently in Super Sourdough (<Amazon affiliate link) by James Morton. where he actually cooks the pizza in a super hot cast iron skillet on the stovetop, then pops it in the oven under the broiler to melt the cheese and finish it off. I couldn't wait to see if it was the crust of my dreams. 

Spoiler alert: It was! OMG. It was so good with amazing flavor and a wonderful crunchy chewiness. 

Artichokes represent spring, tomatoes and basil represent summer, mushrooms represent autumn and the ham or olives represent winter. We love both ham and olives so I refused to choose just one. It is winter right now after all so that’s how I justify emphasizing it with two ingredients. 

Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza

It’s best to make your dough at least 24 hours before you plan to make pizza. This gives the sourdough starter plenty of time to work and for flavor to develop in the dough. The topping ingredients below are what are typical for a four seasons or quattro stagioni pizza. I’ve shared the amounts I used in parentheses as a guideline, but I know some people love their pizzas heaped with toppings and others prefer a sparser pie. You do you. 

Ingredients

For 3 dinner plate-sized pizzas:

3 1/4 cups or 413g strong white flour plus extra for dusting

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

9 fl oz or 266ml tepid water

1/2 cup or 120g fed sourdough starter

plenty of cornmeal or semolina, for dusting 

1 cup or 240ml of your favorite pizza sauce or make mine with the ingredients below. This makes 1 2/3 cups so you’ll have some leftover for other projects.

For the sauce:

3 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon good olive oil

1 can (14.5oz or 411g) petite diced tomatoes, no salt added 

1 tablespoon tomato paste 

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

sea salt to taste

For the quattro stagioni toppings:

canned artichoke hearts, drained and quartered (8 1/2 oz or 240g)

oil cured black olives (20 – about 2 oz or 60g)

fresh mushrooms (6 oz or 170g)

thin sliced smoked ham (7 oz or 200g)

fresh buffalo mozzarella balls (2 – 4 oz each)

For serving:

handful fresh basil leaves (I like to use the tiny ones that grow at the top of the stems. 

drizzle olive oil

crushed red pepper

Method

In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together. Add the tepid water and the sourdough starter. 

Use a wooden spoon or a Danish dough whisk to combine everything into a wet and sticky dough. Cover the bowl with a damp towel or cling film and then leave it at room temperature for 6-8 hours.

Stretch it and fold it over several times during the rising time to develop the gluten. 

After the 6-8 hours, cover it again and put it in the refrigerator. James Morton says it can be left in the fridge for 3-4 days but it’s best used between 24 and 48 hours. 

Meanwhile, if you are making your own sauce, mince your garlic and place it in a small pot with the olive oil. Cook it gently, being careful not the let it color or, god forbid, burn. 

Pour the canned tomatoes in along with the tomato paste. 

Simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add in the baking soda and stir well. It will bubble up as the baking soda reacts with and neutralizes some of the natural acid in the tomatoes. Taste the sauce and add a little fine sea salt, if needed. Remove the sauce from the stove and leave to cool. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to assemble the pizzas. 

Next we’ll prep the toppings. Drain and quarter the canned artichoke hearts. Smash the olives with the broad side of a knife and discard the pits. 

Clean the mushrooms and cut off any hard stems. Slice the mushrooms. 

When you are ready to bake pizza, divide the dough into three equal pieces. My dough weighed 786g so each of the small pieces weighed 262g. If you don’t have a scale, just eyeball it but if you bake a lot, you’ll find an electronic scale very useful, I promise.

Preheat your broiler (grill) as hot as it goes with the oven door closed or as close to closed as possible, and then start heating a large cast-iron skillet on your stovetop.

I have a pizza peel but if you don’t, use a flat pan without sides (turn a pan over and use the back if you don’t have one without sides) and cover it liberally with cornmeal. Add one of dough balls and use your hands, and extra cornmeal, to stretch the dough into something resembling a roundish pizza crust. 

Add the tomato sauce and then the toppings. Artichokes in one quarter. 

Mushrooms and olives in two other quarters and finally, tear the ham into big bits and drape them in the fourth quarter. Jiggle the pizza peel or pan occasionally to see if the pizza can still move. If not, lift the sides and add more cornmeal till it shifts freely.

Carefully slide the pizza into your screaming hot cast iron skillet. My first pizza tried to fold under on one side so it turned out kind of a wonky shape but it still tasted delicious so who cares, right? 

Cook the pizza on the stovetop for a minute or two, checking the bottom of the crust occasionally by lifting it up. You want brown and crusty, even a little scorching in places but not burnt.

Use your clean hands to tear off pieces of the mozzarella and place them about on the pizza. Turn the stove off. 

Using thick oven mitts, transfer the iron skillet to the oven and place it under the preheated broiler (grill.) Close the oven as much as possible and cook the pizza for a few minutes or until the mozzarella is melted and the top of the pizza is browning. 

Remove the skillet from the oven and slide the pizza on a serving plate and hand it to the first lucky recipient. 

Let them add some fresh basil leaves, a drizzle of good olive oil and some crushed red pepper, as desired, while you get on with cooking the other two pizzas, following the previous instructions again. 

As James Morton says, “It takes the sacrifice of one person to make the family’s pizza, but it’s so worth it. Between each pizza, get your surface back on the stove to heat up to frightening levels again before you slide your next pizza on top.”

Of course, if you have more than one cast iron skillet big enough, you can get this job done much more quickly than I did! 

Enjoy! 

This month my Bread Bakers are all sharing pizza recipes. Check out the list of beauties below! Many thanks to our host, Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories. 

• Aglio e Olio Pizza from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Barley Flour Vegetarian Pizza from Cook with Renu
• Breakfast Biscuit Pizza from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Deep Dish Hawaiian Pizza from Making Miracles
• Dessert Apple Pizza from Magical Ingredients
• Grilled Fruit Pizza from A Messy Kitchen
• Individual Deep Dish Pizzas from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Jerk Chicken Sausage Pizza from Passion Kneaded
• Langallo (Hungarian Pizza) from Palatable Pastime
• No-Knead Thin Crust Margherita Pizza from Sneha's Recipe
• Pizza Empenadas from Ambrosia
• Quattro Stagioni Sourdough Pizza from Food Lust People Love
• Sourdough Pizza from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Valentine's Hearts from Culinary Adventures with Camilla

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Potato Salad Bites

These Potato Salad Bites combine my favorite baked potato skins with my beloved potato salad recipe. They are perfect for your picnics or parties. 

Potato salad is one of my favorite things to make for a picnic because it goes so great with fried chicken and/or sandwiches but then you need utensils and plates or bowls to serve it which unnecessarily complicates a simple picnic. 

When the leader of our Baking Blogger group announced the theme of this month’s challenge, bite-size baking, I put my thinking cap on to solve that problem. Not that we've been enjoying many picnics since it's still pretty chilly but I do like to plan ahead. 

So here you go, finally, potato salad that’s finger food! I hope you enjoy them as much as we did. I put some in a single layer in a plastic container to bring them to my Mom and I hope you'll be as pleased as I was to know that they arrived in perfect form. 

Potato Salad Bites

I used baby red potatoes but you can use whichever small potatoes are available to you. As you can see, mine fit in my deviled egg plate so that gives you an idea of their size. 

Ingredients

For the potato salad:

1 lb 7 oz or 652g small red potatoes (about 10-11)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 eggs, hardboiled

1/4 small Spanish onion 

1/4 cup or 60ml mayonnaise

1/4 cup or 60ml sour cream

2 teaspoons whole grain mustard

For garnish: 

green onion tops

sprinkle of paprika or cayenne

Method

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C. Place the potatoes in a small baking pan and drizzle them with olive oil. Shake them around to coat them with the oil. 

Bake for about 30 minutes or until they are cooked through. I stabbed mine with a pointy knife all the way to the middle to check.

Remove the potatoes from oven, and cool 15 minutes on a wire rack. Don’t turn the oven off but do lower the temperature to 350°F or 180°C.

Meanwhile, finely grate the onion into a mixing bowl. I used a microplane so the onion is super fine. If you don't mind little onion bits in your salad, feel free to use a grater with larger holes. Cut the two hard-boiled eggs into slices into the bowl.

Use the tines of a dinner fork to mash them into smaller bits.

Add in the mayonnaise, sour cream and mustard, as well as a couple of generous grinds of black pepper. Mix well. Set aside.

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle (Despite photos to the contrary, I held mine in a clean towel.) cut each potato in half crosswise. Carefully scoop out the insides of the potatoes, leaving a skin shell about 1/4 in or 1/2 cm thick. Try to keep the scooped potato pieces as large as possible so they don’t turn into mashed potato when we make the potato salad with them. 

Place the shells, cut side up, on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle them with salt and freshly ground black pepper.   

Bake in your still hot oven until dry, about 10 more minutes. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.

When the potato innards are cool, add them to your mixing bowl and fold to combine. Again, trying not to mash the potato pieces completely but you can break up any really large pieces. Taste for salt and add more if needed, plus a couple of generous grinds of black pepper.  Depending on the saltiness of your mayo and whole grain mustard, you might not need much, if any, salt. 

Spoon or scoop the mixture generously into each potato shell. 

Top with some chopped green onion and a sprinkle of cayenne or paprika for color. I use cayenne because we like spicy but my mom and grandmothers always sprinkled a little paprika on a bowl of potato salad so either is good. Chill the potato salad bites until you are ready to serve them.  

Enjoy! 

It's Baking Blogger Monday and we are sharing bite-sized food, which is super fun! Many thanks to our organizer and host, Sue of Palatable Pastime. Check out the link list below. 

• Baked Tater Tots from Magical Ingredients
• Breakfast Toast Cups from Making Miracles
• Chocolate Bouchons from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Eggless Pineapple Cupcakes from Sneha's Recipe
• Hertzoggies (South African Jam and Coconut Tartlets) from Tara's Multicultural Table
• Honey-Kissed Savory Shortbread Crackers from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Muffin Pizzas from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pizza Bombs from Palatable Pastime
• Potato Salad Bites from Food Lust People Love
• Prickly Pear Tartlets from Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interested in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

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Black Pepper Beef with Broccoli and Noodles

A one-pot Chinese style dish, Black Pepper Beef with Broccoli and Noodles would be a delicious (and thrifty) addition to your Chinese New Year celebration menu.

Black pepper beef with broccoli and noodles is a combination of two delicious dishes: a black pepper beef recipe I learned about in Malaysia and the ubiquitous beef and broccoli found on every Chinese restaurant menu in the United States. Plus, to make this a full meal dish, I’ve added fresh egg noodles. With this recipe, just a pound or so of lean beef can feed a family of four a healthy, tasty meal.

If you’ve ever read my About Me page, you know that I’ve lived in quite a few cities and in almost as many countries. As we move on to the next place, there are always local dishes that we’ve grown to love, no longer available to us in our new home city. In the homesickness of the first months, I cook the food we miss from the place we miss. And those recipes become part of our family repertoire forever.

When we lived in Kuala Lumpur, we frequented a Chinese restaurant call Mei Keng Fatt. We had a standard order that always included black pepper beef. It’s a simple dish with almost equal amounts of beef, onions and bell pepper.

Mei Keng Fatt also added some crispy deep fried things that we never quite figured out. Were they tofu? Sliced lotus root? Who knew? They were divine eaten while they were still crunchy so their arrival at the table started a flurry of chopsticks nabbing them quickly. Soon the black pepper beef plate was but a plate of bell pepper, nobody’s favorite part of the dish.

When I started making black pepper beef at home, it was never as a part of a greater Chinese dinner. As much as I love eating out and having so many dishes to choose from and share, it was just not practical for our busy family home.

I began adding broccoli (and leaving out the bell pepper) to stretch that lean beef dish into a full meal. Often I’d serve it with steamed rice but fresh egg noodles, if you are fortunate enough to have a store nearby that stocks them, are a fabulous addition, making this a one-pot meal. If you don't have access to fresh egg noodles, use the Chinese-style dried ones or even normal linguine. I've substituted both of those successfully in this dish. 

Black Pepper Beef with Broccoli and Noodles

You can crush all of the peppercorns together, for the marinade and for finishing the dish with a mortar and pestle. Use 3/4 of it in the marinade and reserve the balance for sprinkling on the cooked dish. Don’t grind the peppercorns just crush them so they are coarse grain. 

Ingredients

For the marinade:

1 1/2 teaspoons or 6 grams whole black peppercorns, crushed

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or substitute dry sherry)

2 teaspoons cornstarch

2 teaspoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or again, substitute dry sherry)

2 teaspoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

For the black pepper beef with broccoli and noodles:

1.1 lbs or 500g tenderloin or sirloin, cut into strips (like for stroganoff)

14 oz or 400g fresh yellow egg noodles

1 1/2 tablespoons canola or other light oil

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1/2 onion, peeled and cut into 1/4" wedges

1 small knob fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 lb or 450g broccoli florets 

1 carrot, peeled and cut in matchsticks 

To garnish:

Green onions, chopped

1/2 teaspoon or 2g whole black peppercorns, crushed

Food Lust People Love: A one-pot Chinese style dish, Black Pepper Beef with Broccoli and Noodles would be a delicious (and thrifty) addition to your Chinese New Year celebration menu.

Add all of your marinade ingredients into a bowl with the beef. Stir well to mix and coat the beef. Set aside to marinate for at least 15 minutes. I usually do this step first, then prep the other ingredients, so the beef marinates for at least 30 minutes.

 

Mix your sauce ingredients together in another small bowl and set aside. 

Cook the egg noodles according to package instructions being careful not the cut or break them. According to Chinese superstition, the longer the noodles you eat are, the longer the lifespan you will enjoy. Drain and rinse with cold water until they are cool and all the excess starch is removed. Set aside in the colander to drain. 

Heat a wok or cast iron skillet over high heat until hot. Add the oil, and then immediately add the beef. Quickly spread the beef out so it is in a single layer. Leave to cook on high until the pieces start to brown and caramelize on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Do not stir or move the beef until it’s well browned. 

Add the garlic, ginger, onions, and stir-fry for a minute or two. 

Add the broccoli and continue stir-frying. Keeping stirring and cooking until the broccoli has almost reached your desired tenderness. We like it pretty crunchy. If you need to drizzle in a little water, do so. 

Add in the cooled noodles and tip the sauce on top. 

Use two stirring implements and a gentle tossing motion (like tossing salad) to mix the noodles and sauce thoroughly into the broccoli and beef. 

Cook for just a minute or two, until the noodles are warmed through then mix in the matchstick carrots. 

Remove from the heat and sprinkle with the remaining crushed black pepper. Garnish with chopped green onions. 

This dish is best served immediately but I have also been known to eat leftovers, warmed gently in the microwave the next day. Still delicious. 

Enjoy! 

It's Sunday FunDay again and my fellow bloggers are sharing recipes to celebrate Chinese aka Lunar New Year. Check out the links below. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. 

• Black Pepper Beef and Broccoli with Noodles by Food Lust People Love 
• Chinese New Year Skillet by Making Miracles 
• Easy Chicken Egg Rolls by A Day in the Life on the Farm 
• Lion's Head Meatballs by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Lucky Duck, Gold Bars, and Longevity Noodles by Culinary Adventures with Camilla 
• Mongolian Lamb by Palatable Pastime
• Pan Fried Crispy Tofu Bowl by Cook with Renu
• Steak Fingers With Steamed Rice by Sneha's Recipe 
• Sticky Asian Baked Wings with Honey by Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Stir-fried Clams in Bean Sauce by Karen's Kitchen Stories

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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