Friday, January 19, 2007

Stromboli from our own oven

I'm sure most of you know that I love pizza. If you don't know - get this straight - no one loves pizza more than me. No, seriously, NO-ONE, NO-BODY, NOT a SINGLE PERSON, NOT EVEN CLOSE. I looooove Pizza. I have pizza kids books, I research pizza whenever I get a chance. I've been known to take any crust type food, any sauce type food, and any cheese, and just slap together a pizza.

Got some leftover pancakes, half a jar of store bought spaghetti sauce, and part of a block of baby Swiss you never used at the party last night? You've got enough ingredients for pizza!
Of course, most of the time, I plan it out a bit more. Prep the pizza dough the night before so it can slow rise and ferment in the fridge. This makes for a crispy and tender crust with lots of flavor. Sometimes I make my own sauce, but I often use Del Grosso, Furmano's, and lately we've been using Don Pepino. It's also fun to switch up the cheeses and toppings as well.

I usually just assemble as normal, and bake in a crank up oven up as high as it'll go - ours goes to 550. Note that most pizza shop ovens are set at around 650-750 or even higher. Surprisingly this even works for cooking frozen pizza, thicker crust pizzas, and as I learned today - Stromboli
This was actually the time I've made a Stromboli for a long time. We went with a chicken cheese steak Stromboli, partly to trick ourselves into thinking it was somewhat healthy. Certainly, this was better for us than regular cheesesteak or Italian style (with all kinds of Italian meats). Oh how I long for the days of packing away the world greasiest and tastiest cheesesteak Strombolis from the Sugar Bowl at Millersville (we used to call it the grease bowl - it accounted for most of the "freshman 15").
We made individual bolis, but could only manage to eat half. Both had grilled onions, thinly sliced chicken, pizza sauce, plus a little provolone, mozzarella and ricotta. The wife added mushrooms, and I added hot peppers. We were both skeptical that it would even work out, as Stromboli is a strange looking beast before cooking. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture before baking, but here's what it looked like right out of the oven.

One of the things I worry about with a blog like this is that I don't want to seem like I'm bragging. But, I must say - this Stromboli was beautiful and tasted fantastic.


3 comments:

Unknown said...

I just read this entry at the beginning of my lunch break ... before eating. HUGE mistake! My mouth is now literally watering uncontrollably and somehow I just don't think my puny sandwich is going to be satisfying!

mel said...

Oh yum! What is your dough recipe? I never found one to my satisfaction.

Unknown said...

I found your blog when searching for "the sugar bowl" boli recipe. I too am a 'ville alumi (class '86) and am on a quest to replicate the sugar bowl steak boli. My first challenge is replicating the dough. Have you been able to do that? Also, I always believed they used Feta cheese in their boli's since they were greek. I remember the little old greek grandmother making boli's behind the counter as we would stagger on a quest to deal with our post-party munchies