Funky Pizza at Home

For dinner, I had homemade pizza and beer from TJ's.



The pizza started as an adventure, and ended as an adventurous mistake. I didn't feel like opening a can of pasta sauce, or using the sketchy ("craz-ee"?) HFCS-laced tomato sauce can leftover from a Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit. Instead, I attempted a sweet-savory sauce by mixing dijon mustard with boysenberry preserves. I topped it with pesto chicken sausage from TJ's and some Kraft sprinkle cheese (I know, I know, naughty food blogger). The whole thing looked a little sparse, so I poked around in the refrigerator. I try not to keep cheese in there, because I love it way too much- I could live happily forever on a diet of cave-aged Gruyere, dark chocolate, and red wine. As you may have guessed, I used the Kraft cheese because we had none. Except. There, in a back corner, I found a plastic tub of blue cheese left over from this Superbowl weekend dip. I dumped the rest on my pizza. MISTAKE.

I hate blue cheese. Jon hates blue cheese. Tangy blue cheese + tangy dijon= FAIL. It was kind of overwhelming. On the good side, the dijon/boysenberry mixture would've been really nice without it. And my beer, TJ's Vienna-style lager, was pretty decent as well- we bought their 12/$12.99 mystery pack, and were not disappointed.

Bread from Beard for Breakfast

For breakfast, I had some homemade bread with butter and boysenberry preserves, and some coffee.



I ran out of white whole wheat flour a few days ago, so I'm trying to get rid of all the weird, adventurous flours I have on hand before I buy more. Specifically, I have graham flour and dark rye flour on hand. I decided to tackle the graham flour first, with Beard on Bread's graham bread recipe.

Graham flour, interestingly, is just normal whole-wheat flour milled differently. Instead of being milled whole, the wheat is separated into endosperm, bran, and germ, and milled to different degrees of fineness before being re-mixed. Stupidly, I somehow expected it to taste like graham crackers. It did not. But it turned out reasonably well.




My only complaint is the overwhelming smell of fermentation my bread always has. Sort of boozy. I've heard it's from too much yeast, or too much time rising? Next time, I want to try the overnight refrigerator rise that bread bakers advocate for more developed, nuanced flavors.

Regardless, I added some butter (not Cabot's, needless to say), and boysenberry preserves from TJ's, and it became delicious.

The coffee is TJ's pinon blend. I still don't like it, but it's almost gone. I can't wait, so I can buy some beans from Northwest Coffee instead.