by Laura Holland
I love SimpleMom’s ideas for menu planning. I mean, she is really organized. She usually plans two weeks of menus and sometimes plans a month’s worth of menus at a time.
Normally, though, she plans two weeks of meals and then just repeats them to make a month of meals. She uses her Google Planner and her del.icio.us cookbook to help automate this meal repeat process. (Very cool, take a look at her site for the details).
I’m not sure I can motivate myself to be that organized, but I want to try her idea of having a set theme for each day of the week. Every Monday she has Mexican, Tuesday is pasta night, Wednesday is Asian/Stir fry, Thursday is Crock Pot night, and Friday features pizza and homemade dessert. Weekends are more of a free-for-all.
I especially love, love, love the idea of pizza night. It’s kind-friendly, it’s fun, and it is a chance to up the healthiness quotient of your family’s favorite treat.
Her idea of making extra dough and freezing is another fantastic idea. Even if your freezer is full, making extra dough is a good idea because it keeps well in the fridge for a few days. It actually makes better pizza after sitting in fridge for a couple of days.
With extra dough, you can make pizza one night and then, later in the week, use the leftover dough to make garlic knots to go with pasta. Or you can make calzones or more pizza.
SimpleMom favors these recipes for sauce and crust.
Personally, I like to make a whole-wheat crust, and I have tried several recipes. My latest favorite is from Peter Reinhart. I have had terrific success with the recipes from his latest book, Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads, and I trust his recipes completely.
I am a big fan of Peter Reinhart’s bread recipes in general. If you are a serious bread-head, you probably already own The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. At the very least, if you love to bake bread, you have heard about his books. He got pretty serious about pizza and wrote a whole book on the topic, called American Pie, but The Bread Baker’s Apprentice has a well-liked pizza recipe, too.
Heidi, over at 101 Cookbooks, has posted his pizza recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and she has separately posted about her experience making this recipe with all whole wheat. She warns that the whole wheat version is on the heavier side and seriously recommends making the dough very thin.
I have tried this recipe using half King Arthur’s white whole wheat flour and half white flour. It doesn’t take whole-wheaty or health-foody at all. The white whole wheat flour just makes the crust so much more flavorful (and, yes, healthier) than what you would get in a regular pizza place.
After all, if you are not going to up the flavor or healthiness of the pizza dough, you might as well use frozen pizza dough or buy a ball of dough from your local pizza place.
Not that there is anything wrong with using pre-made dough. Actually, that is what my sister does when she makes calzones, and her family is very, very happy with the results.
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