I love to make pizza from scratch but haven’t had a lot of time on my hands since baby Sara was born. This long weekend (and the suddenly chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having in Southern California) seemed like the right time to do it. I’ve whittled down my pizza making experience to two fantastic recipes, which I’m sharing here. This combination produces THE BEST pizza. Like, impress your fam and friends good. Impress yourself good!

The recipes:

I used Alton Brown’s “only pizza dough recipe I’ll ever need” and agree it’s pretty much perfect. You’ll need a digital scale, which honestly makes baking of any kind so much better and precise. I use the OXO digital scale because it’s so simple to use.

This here is my go-to pizza sauce recipe, though I usually omit the celery and fennel seed. The sauce is SO yummy and makes enough for the two crusts. It’s also a great dipping sauce.

My notes:

I made the dough recipe into two pizza crusts instead of three. You can easily freeze one if you wish. Make stretch/roll nice and thin, using the extra flour noted to help shape them. I made my pizza dough with all-purpose flour because I didn’t have bread flour on hand. I also don’t have a baking steel or even a pizza stone. So I made this on a heavy duty rimmed baking sheet—hence my oblong pizza shape. This was still SO good with these adjustments, which I think most people might make.

I baked mine for about 15 minutes at 450 degrees F.

Remember to brush the entire crust lightly with olive oil BEFORE adding pizza sauce or toppings. It helps prevent the crust from getting soggy.

The upper slices are made with non-dairy cheese. I try to use non-dairy or lactose-free alternatives because our daughter has a mild dairy sensitivity. (Her doc OK’d small amounts of regular dairy but I err on the safe side most of the time.) This was my first time buying Miyoko non-dairy/vegan mozzarella and it was really quite good, probably the best non-dairy mozz we’ve tried and we’ve tried a few brands. We actually made our second pizza using only this cheese. I would def buy it again. The rest of this pizza was made with fresh mozzarella, which was obviously delicious lol. I also used oversized pepperoni which we all love.

Wishing you perfect pizzas!

There are days that I crave veggie bowls. They make a great, easy lunch—especially if you’ve roasted your vegetables on the weekend and have them ready to go. I love winter vegetables! The combination of carrots, fennel, beets, and red onion is lovely. For my bowl, I made a batch of rice and added sauteed spinach. I squeezed lemon juice and sprinkled sea salt over everything. It was very satisfying on a chilly afternoon.

This feels like the kind of bowl you’d enjoy on some hilltop cottage overlooking a wintry sea.

I’m always trying to eat more vegetables. It makes a lot of sense to me to eat a plant-based diet. They’re packed with healthy nutrients. I’ve also noticed that when my meals are geared toward vegetables, my grocery bill is smaller. While I’m not quite willing to stop eating meat entirely, I do like maximizing veggies.

I roasted the veggies for about 30 min @ 350 but next time I think I’ll up that to about 375. I used two roasting pans. It can be smart to separate your beets into one of them since they’re so dense and might need a little extra time.  I sprinkled the vegetables with olive oil, lemon juice, coriander, and paprika.

Since I’m still in my wintry mood, I’ll leave you with this poem:

When the Winter Chrysanthemums Go

by Matsuo Bashō

When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there’s nothing to write about
but radishes.