Yesterday I decided to finally try my natural raisin yeast bread out as a pizza crust and it turned out pretty good. Though I still have yet to master the art of tossing the dough, especially when talking about whole wheat as it is a much more fragile and tears easier than white flour dough, I still keep trying!
My wheat flour is home ground from presoaked organic white wheat berries to make it more gut friendly. Which reminds me, I have an update to come out eventually on a mod Mr. Rain made to my Country Living Grain Mill, but you will have to wait on that one! ;)
I started by making my sauce on the rocket stove using my own garden tomatoes and herbs, plus a few store bought things I have trouble growing myself like rosemary and of course, salt. I do not have my own salt mine after all! haha
The toppings included home canned beef seasoned with Italian herbs, foraged Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, mozzarella cheese, black olives. The rest of the toppings all came from my garden and were purple basil, zucchini, garlic, tomatoes, calendula, and young grape leaves. Since the Chicken of the Woods had been previously dehydrated and grape leaves can be a bit tough, I soaked the mushrooms for awhile in hot filtered rain water, then lightly sauteed both the leaves and the mushrooms in avocado oil and my own raisin vinegar before putting them on the pizza.
On a side note, I stopped buying sausage and pepperoni from the store years ago for two reasons, they are loaded with garbage and I try to avoid pork, I just do not believe it to be a very healthy meat. I have not tried yet making my own pepperoni though I plan to some day, in the mean time, I have found a couple of creative ways to duplicate the flavor using grass fed ground beef or, as in this case, home canned beef roast by simply preparing it first with good Italian herbs such as rosemary, basil, oregano, Redmond Real Salt and lots of garlic.
The pizza as a whole turned out amazing and there is something truly satisfying about how much self sufficiency and frugality went into the process of making this.
I hope you are all having a lovely week and pray you are safe from the fires and hurricanes! ~Heidi
