Almost Local Homemade Whole Wheat Pizza

This is a quick and relatively easy dinner option for us. I personally don't like pizza so I make a separate pan of breadsticks for myself. I like the following recipe which can be found at http://www.wheatfoods.org/Quick-Whole-Wheat-Pizza-Crust.217.1.htm

Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 package active dry yeast/instant yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup hot tap water (120 - 125°F)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon honey or granulated sugar

I mix the ingredients together in a bowl and then dump it out on to a floured countertop. I add parsley, oregano, and a little garlic salt to the dough to taste. Knead for a couple minutes adding extra flour as needed. Then roll out with a rolling pin into a circle big enough for your pizza pan. You can make 2 thin crust pizzas or 1 regular crust with this recipe. Carefully transfer the dough to a greased pizza pan.



Last time I bought cheese sticks Kraft brand was on sale so I bought that kind. We think they are gross: plastic like with no flavor. I thought I'd use them up by making this pizza with a stuffed crust. Just push some extra dough up over the lip of the pan. Place strips of the cheese around the edge and push them in to the dough slightly. Then roll the lip down and over the cheese while pushing the whole edge back against the lip of the pan.



Time to add the toppings. I used home canned tomato sauce and shredded 4 more cheese sticks to put on top of the sauce. I add venison pepper sticks from Brian's deer, sliced thinly with a knife, in place of store bought pepperoni. On goes 1 small can of mushrooms.



As a special touch I melt some butter, mix in a little garlic salt and herbs, and spread that over the crust. It makes it a little more moist which is part of what Brian missed from take out pizza. He approved this recipe and doesn't dislike it like he has some of the others I've tried.

Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, or try a little longer if it isn't crisp.

For our pizza the ingredients are as follows:
Veggie oil, sugar, flour, tomato sauce, pepper stick - all very local
Sea salt - purchased at Lansing Market
Yeast, mushrooms, cheese - purchased at local grocery

Theoretically one could grow their own mushrooms and purchase local cheese for a totally local experience! What is your favorite almost local dish? Or easy dinner idea?

A Local Loaf

Today I picked up another order of local flours from Hampshire Farms (see sidebar for link). I got:

25# 100% whole grain bread flour
10# 100% whole grain pastry flour
2# cornmeal
5# sunflower seeds (dehulled)

Randy Hampshire, who filled my order was more than happy to show me around their farm. They have a USDA approved kitchen on site along with the brick oven that Randy built himself. It was very impressive! The farm also boasts a nice warehouse in an old grainery, where all of their flour and wheat is stored.

They also have, meandering around the pastures, a family cow. She is a nice looking Jersey and had a few other cattle keeping her company. I have given a lot of thought to having our own family cow and have thought about it more and more seriously lately. I don't think it is the right time for us, and it would take a lot to convince my husband. He probably has a point - it is a lot easier to find someone to throw in some grain for our animals then to milk twice a day when we want a vacation. In any case, of was jealous of Randy's family and I told him so.

Randy warned that I would want to use a recipe that calls for 100% WHOLE GRAIN flour, not just whole wheat or white flour. A Google search revealed this recipe, and I altered it in to the following for use in my bread maker:

1 Tbsp active dry yeast
3 3/4 cup whole grain flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbsp oil
1 1/2 very warm water

This is a big breakthrough for me: I now have the option of making a nearly 100% local loaf of bread for our everyday needs. Although Hampshire Farms is based 1/2 hour away from here the wheat for the bread flour was grown in an organic field only 1 1/2 miles down the road from our home. The honey comes from a local apiary, P.W.R. Beekeeping. I did use a non-local canola oil in today's loaf but only because I'm out of my normal Zoye Soybean Oil, made in Zeeland, MI from a lot of our neighbors' soybeans. Soy Beginnings soybean oil is also available so I have a couple options there. The only non-local ingredients are the yeast, which I buy in bulk, and the salt. We will be switching to sea salt as soon as our last never ending box of conventional salt is gone.

Oh, one more nice thing: I was relieved to see that the 10 & 25# quantities came in a large brown paper bag with no plastic liner. The smaller quantities I got last time came in plastic and since we're trying to reduce how much plastic we use I was a little concerned. No worries!

Here is a pic of the pull out cabinets that came with our ancient farmhouse, a great feature that makes storing all of this flour much easier:



And Maci, she was jealous and wanted to lick the camera:



So, what local products were you surprised to find in your neighborhood? Are you at the point yet were you have entirely local meal options?

Living Like A Pioneer

So in honor of Crunchy Chicken's Pioneer Week I'm doing things a little different this week. The idea is to live as much like a Pioneer as you can by using local, non-processed goods and giving up some modern conveniences. For me this means no TV this week. I did watch the election coverage last night and I'm not avoiding my husband by leaving the room when he watches TV, but I am keeping my attention on my book (currently reading You Can Farm).

I've also been baking like crazy. Honestly, I just pulled the last breads out of the oven and now the entire length of the counter is lined with homemade goodies. Today I finally got my first order of locally grown & ground flours from Hampshire Farms. Perfect timing for this challenge! The flour is definitely more coarse than store bought. The whole wheat bread flour didn't work too well with the dough hooks in my mixer so I kneaded it by hand for the whole 10 minutes. I also got some pastry flour and cornmeal, so I made a pan of cornbread with dinner. I cooked pork chops from our local meat market where most of the meat comes from farmers in the area. On the side we had non-local whole wheat rotini noodles with some cheese melted on top and mixed in. Not organic and not local, but a big step up from the boxed stuff we have in the pantry. I also made apple bread for breakfast this week and an apple pie with my canned filling and made from scratch crust, along with homemade oreos for my favorite dessert.


Before heading in to the kitchen I rushed home to plant my garlic before it got dark outside. I learned how to plant garlic from Farm Mom but it was all sold out when I tried to order my own. Then Melinda suggested Peaceful Valley Farm Supply. I ordered 1 lb. of German White and 1 lb. of Music. I got about 30 cloves of each. I loosened up a patch in my garden and was so thrilled to see how rich and fertile the soil is already after only one season of mulching and adding compost. I came across several earthworms. Brian brought me a bobcat bucket full of compost and I raked that on top of what I had loosened, planting each clove 4-6" apart and about 2" deep. Then I raked over the holes and mulched the whole thing with about a foot of leaves. I'll see how many blow off, maybe I'll have to add some straw.

I also tended to the chickens and ventured out to the garden with a flashlight in the middle of baking to pull a carrot for my cornbread.

Here's an idea: the Laura Ingalls Wilder workout plan. Arms = knead bread. Legs = ride horses. Abs = hoe the garden. I'd be so fit. ;)

Check out Crunchy Chicken's page to see what everyone else is doing for Pioneer Week.