I made the monthly Sam’s run for Chocolate Kisses this week. Remember I told you that I get looks and comments whenever I buy the Loopy Kisses? This is what 105 pounds of kisses looks like (along with peanut M&M’s for the Elves, and 3200 page protectors for the May Sock Club and Sock Club Lite patterns). I’m thinking this might be my last kisses run until the fall, since we have to switch to non-melting options for the warm weather. And warm weather starts up here pretty darned soon. (No one blinks twice when I walk by with a cart full of peppermints. Go figure.)
So what’s your least favorite household chore? Mine is grocery shopping. (Well, really, the whole process. Menu planning, shopping, dragging it all in from the car, putting it all away.) I like cleaning, I don’t mind laundry, and I like cooking and baking. But grocery shopping? Not at all.
And speaking of cooking and baking, I’m sharing a pizza crust recipe with you today. Why just the crust? This is from Cook’s Illustrated (love that magazine) and the whole deep dish pizza recipe is too long to type it all out for you. But the crust was the best part of it, anyway. 🙂 I thought their sauce recipe was ok, but next time I’ll use my grandma’s spaghetti sauce for this pizza. This was adapted for my big deep dish pizza pan, but you can split it up for smaller pans. Don’t be put off with the wordy instructions. It’s actually pretty simple, and totally worth it.
Delicious Deep Dish Pizza Dough
4 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
2 1/4 tsp. salt
3 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 packs instant or rapid rise yeast (just over 3 tsp.)
15 oz. water, room temperature
4 1/2 Tbl. unsalted butter, melted
plus 6 Tbl, softened
1 1/2 tsp. plus 6 Tbl. olive oil
Mix flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer and knead with the bread hook on low speed for about a minute. Add water and melted butter and mix until fully combined (low speed). Mix at medium spead for 4-5 minutes until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl as it mixes. Coat a large bowl with 1 1/2 tsp. olive oil and put the dough into the oiled bowl (flipping it once so that the top and bottom are coated in oil). Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled (about 45-60 minutes).
When done, turn dough out onto a dry work surface and roll into a 12 x 15 rectangle. Spread the softened butter over the surface, leaving a half inch border around the edges. Roll up into a tube (starting with the short side and rolling to the other short side). Now flatten the tube into an 18 x 4 inch rectangle. Fold the rectangle into thirds (folding the short ends in). Pinch the seams together and return to the oiled bowl, cover with plastic and let double again (about 45 – 60 minutes). Turn out onto a dry work surface and roll into the size circle you need for your pizza pan. (Note – you can split the dough before the final rise, if you’re going to be making smaller pizzas.)
We added cheese, sauce and toppings (in that order), ending with Parmesan cheese on the top. For Deep Dish Pizza, bake at 425 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
I’m off for Spring Break – yay! At the moment, we’re driving through the lovely state of Kansas, heading to the mountains. Knitting Daughter will join us for the week and Web Guy will join us for a long weekend (no more Spring Breaks for Web Guy – it’s all Working World now.) I’ll be back in the office on the 5th, but I’ll blog on Monday to let you know what we’re putting up for you that night. Of course Loopy goes on whether I’m here or not, thanks to Awesome Susan and the Elves. I just love them.
Contest winners on Monday!
Sheri whoplanstobesnoozingwhenwepassthecreepywindturbines
The only thing I really hate is cooking. I love to eat, though, so it’s a lot of prepared foods and tuna!
I love the Kisses, but I was delighted last summer with the little Tootsie Rolls. I wouldn’t mind seeing those again!
Have a great vacation with your family.
Least favorite chore at home is sweeping….I’m terrible at it. My husband does much better. 🙂
Oh, and my least favorite “office” chore is filing.
We are Cooks Illustrated fans. I have their New Best Recipe Cookbook and consider it the “bible” of cooking. I’ve made an excellent pie crust from it. Also, my husband has started brining bone-in chicken breasts before grilling them and it makes all the difference in the world. They really do plump up and they are never dry.
Have a wonderful vacation! I think the thing I really hate the most is the bathtub. Thank goodness my daughter likes baths. She will clean the tub first.
Have a great vacation….I don’t like to dust! Even as a kid I use to dust around stuff (my chore), Mom use to catch me & tell me to pick up the stuff.. I love grocery shopping..checking out new stores when we go on vacation!!
Have a great vacation, Sheri! My least favorite chore? Cleaning. All of it (with the possible exception of washing the dishes). I see from reading the comments that other people also have issues with dusting, mopping, scrubbing out the bathroom, etc. Over here they are all such clean freaks, if there’s a speck of dust on the counter you’re considered a slob. I don’t mind laundry, though, and grocery shopping is a treat!
I will put off dusting as long as I can and I live in a pretty dusty area!! So I have to dust much more than I likie to. It’s either that or learn to live with furniture that’s a different color than I started with!
When I’ve lived alone grocery shopping is a breeze (I can buy only what I like and will use while it’s harder to predict and plan if cooking for a group. I hate taking out the garbage. It’s not hard but it’s just something I don’t like.
Have a great break and time with your kids.
My least favorite chore, hands down, is laundry. The worst part is folding it and putting it away. I always thought disposable clothes would be a good idea.
I like menu planning and grocery shoppying. Now that the kids are grown my DH and I go grocery shopping together and have lunch. This is our weekly Sunday date.
My simply hate to dust! I’d rather do any other chore, than dust. I’m allergic to dust, pollen, and dust mites, so I have a difficult time coming to terms with the dust.
My least favorite is cleaning – I hate the chemicals and stuff and it doesn’t seem to last “clean” very long (3 teenage boys and 1 10 year old girl). We will try out your pizza recipe, it sounds great.
Have a wonderful vacation, hoping you get lots of rest/relaxation, and tons of knitting time.
I have such a yen for pizza and chocolates right now!
Least favorite chore – taking the trash and recycling to the end-of-the-road pick-up spot, first thing Wed. mornings. It’s especially traumatic when I over sleep/don’t have time for a shower first and wake-up with a serious case of bed-head. Winter hats help, but only in the winter. I feel traumatized just thinking about it.
Is “pizza and chocolates” a nutritionally balanced meal?
I hate to clean the bathrooms.
My least favorite chore is the litter boxes, followed by vacuuming. I LOVE to cook and shop. I read cooking blogs and collect recipes in my master cook program.
Menu planning! I hate all parts of it.
And when the Loopiest is away….the elves will play 🙂
Hey Sheri!
We all know you are a fan of hershey’s kisses, but what other chocolate do you like? I am a fan of See’s candy (I have to ship it out to my in laws in Iowa..unsure if there is one in St. Louis), and a new fan of Ritter-Sport. Have you tried these? I am curious to find out!
– Kathryn
I don’t like grocery shopping either. I wish one of our local stores would start “on-line curb service” or delivery service. Have a nice vacation.
My least favorite household chore is…IRONING! I can put that off forever. But my most favorite chore is grocery shopping. I love the planning, the executing, the whole thing.
Thanks for the recipe–I’ve NEVER gone wrong with one of the recipes you share!
I really do hate the groceries/menu planning thing, but my dear husband loves the challenges of saving money when shopping (our stores put a savings sections on their receipts that even shows the % we saved!), so he shops on Wednesdays (double coupon day at Copp’s), and also gets up early to hunt in the bargain meat bin at Festival (these are the meats that will need to be frozen when taken home, but they are still good). He also loves to cook–thank goodness, as I’ve been in a flare-up with my IBD and don’t find much food appealing and our two adult daughters are living with us for the time being–he is so special because of all he does to help me (but NOT for his recent statement that I have to stop buying so much yarn!!).
Anyway, if I DO feel well enough to actually cook something (and pizza is one of my “specialties”), I just let him know and he gets it. My most recent success was Quiche Lorraine, which inspired my oldest daughter to also try her hand with a quiche…..we ARE eating well with the daughters here!!
Oh–chocolate only counts as dinner if you use it in a mole sauce with turkey!!!
Happy Knitting!
j
Hope you have a great vacation!
My least favorite chore…washing dishes! When I met Romeo, I was living in an apartment w/o a dishwasher, and he used to come over and wash my dishes (yeah…for some reason, he enjoys it…). I had to marry him after that, you know???
No contest. Ironing. I hate it.
Yum, I love cooking. My mom started a sourdough starter a couple months ago and we have been going crazy with it! Muffins, bread (the BEST bread ever!), cake, even brownies! Yum!
Laundry is my chore at our house, and I hate it. But not as much as washing dishes. Or cleaning up after animals. Oddly, I don’t mind changing the baby. But cleaning a cage is just…. Yeah. I love the rabbit too much tho, so tolerate the cage cleaning I do!
Oh, and FPS, Sherri, it’s Monday! *g* Let us know who won, eh? 😀
~Rachel Ineedtoknitanddoschool.WhichshouldIdo?
Laundry sucks! I live in an apartment building so–since you can’t do the laundry naked–you are actually wearing laundry while you are trying to finish it. I can wash all the dishes, put them away and be done. I can vacuum the whole house and be done. One of the upsides of the last year is that we got a new elevator in the building so we had to live without one for 9 weeks while they rebuilt and installed the new car. It was amazing to me how long I can go without actually doing laundry. And I wasn’t reduced to wearing my prom dress even once.
P.S. I love grocery shopping. I live close enough to the Fairway at 125th Street in Manhattan to make it my regular market and it is such a fun place to shop. They always have wonderful produce, a great butcher, and all sorts of fun ethnic food. The place is huge and it’s like a mix of Costco, Dean & DeLuca and the A&P for people who live in apartments. I’ve always said–if they don’t have it, you don’t need it. And Dinosaur Bar-b-que is right next door. If you’re ever in NY, call and I’ll take you out for some life changing grocery shopping.
Awww, I love wind turbines!
Great picture of the kisses–it is pretty striking.
(Can you post the no-roll pizza dough from CI next? The one I can’t find the issue for anywhere in the house, darn it!) 😉
That’s funny! I get looks when I am at Sam’s in a long checkout line (or Costco when I lived in VT) & I pull out my current sock project. Hey-at least I get a few rows done while I wait. People seem to spend way too much time staring at other shoppers’ carts at the warehouse stores-I don’t know why!