Friday, April 2, 2010

OAMC April: Day 1, Part 3...It's not DeGiorno, It's Homemade!



Well, I made the cardinal mistake of mothers everywhere.  I punched down the "taking over the universe" dough and then stuck it into the fridge to make it have a "chewier" texture when I'd make the pizzas.  So, then I sat down, sipped my ice water (aka lovely beverage), put it on the coffee table for a minute, put my feet up...and yeah I woke up an hour later when my kids woke me up.  Whoops!

But, I did put on the pizzas and they are now out of the oven (when I pulled the first one I took a picture of it for you :).  I cut up one for dinner and the other one I'm just going to stick on some cardboard and freeze.  Then we can just microwave the pizza when we want to eat it.  It'll be chewy that way, but I like chewy pizza, so I'm okay with that.

I then took some thin cut pork chops I had in the freezer and thawed out today and decided to make a pork chop curry bake with them.  I haven't made a good curry in a long time, so that'll be a nice change of pace.  It's cooking away in the oven now.

And now, onto my next project, the chicken lo mein and the "easy to stuff" manicotti.  Later!

4 comments:

Jessica @ Alaska's Best Grocery Deals said...

Looks YUMMY!

I think I have talked myself into buying pizza dough balls from Sam's Club (they work out to be about $1.05 each for a box of 20.)

Have you ever bought dough? I figure it will be an adventure if nothing else....

Erika, "The Make Do Homemaker" said...

I bought some bread dough balls once and only once. Mainly because once I defrosted them the way the bag said and then let them rise the way the bag said and then let them cook the way the bag said...I was out over three hours of time. At that point, I figured, I might as well buy a breadmaker and have the bread cooking while I was doing other things. I mean when you are looking at (almost) the same amount of time to get pre-made dough balls and making them yourself...eh...I just do it myself.

And pizza dough is SO easy if you have a breadmaker. I mean the stuff I just used I just put through the dough cycle on the breadmaker and then divided it up, froze it by putting it straight into freezer bags, and when ready to use I just put it out on the counter while I was cooking other things. Works out great :). Good luck with the dough balls though! I hope you have better luck then I did *laugh*.

Jessica @ Alaska's Best Grocery Deals said...

Never considered using the breadmaker, hmmm....I wonder how many pizza crust you can get out of one cycle, probably just 2, huh?!

Erika, "The Make Do Homemaker" said...

I have gotten anywhere from two to four...depending on A) How big you make your pizzas (like these last two were larges easy so I just made the pizza crust into two dough balls), and B) How much yeast the pizza dough uses. This last recipe I used made the dough HUGE...it was almost like mutant dough it kept rising so fast and hard...but it also used a lot of yeast (because TECHNICALLY the recipe is done so you don't have to let the dough rise...you just throw the yeast in and the thing rises in the oven...I think I'll probably half the yeast next time :), so by the time the bread maker was done with the dough cycle the sucker was almost busting at the seams. But the last time I made it I just used a pizza crust recipe I got off of Money Saving Mom (I THINK) and that one didn't rise as much and I was able to get four dough balls out of the breadmaker by doubling the recipe.

So, I guess the long and short of it is that I'd say as little as two can be made in the bread maker and as much as four *laugh*. I like the dough cycle though because really if you just use that 1 1/2 hours and your dough is all done for you and you can just divide, freeze and move on :). Can't tell I love my breadmaker can you *laugh*.