Breakin' In The Mixer: Multigrain Pizza Crusts

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be making these pizza crusts when my Kitchenaid mixer arrives. Well, yesterday when I came home from work, I had a pleasant surprise at my front door!

Needless to say, everything I originally planned on doing (cleaning, calling my parents, etc.) was thrown out the window and I got to work on those pizza crusts!

It definitely tested my patience with this recipe. I'm not use to working with yeast... and it requires a lot more waiting than I'm used to! I followed the recipe almost exactly, save these minor changes:

• I didn't have any sesame, poppy, or other seeds on hand, so I omitted them.
• I didn't have dried onion, so I used 2 heaping tablespoons of Mrs. Dash Garlic & Herb.
• I used ground flax meal instead of flax seeds.
• I only had 1/4 cup of oil (not 1/3).
• I brushed the top of the crusts with vegetable oil and sprinkled dried oregano on top before baking.

Regardless, they were yummy! The recipe yielded 16 individual-sized crusts. I saved 4 in some parchment paper, 1 in the fridge, 6 in the freezer, and 4 I brought to work for a friend of mine. Yes, that only adds to 15... so what did I do with the 16th one?

I made a pizza, of course!

Green Monster Personal Pizza

Serves One

1 Multigrain Pizza Crust

1/2 haas avocado

2 tsp minced garlic

5 asparagus spears

8 leaves of baby spinach

1 oz. feta cheese

Top the crust with garlic, followed by spinach and asparagus. Crumble feta cheese on top as evenly as possible. Bake at 400 degrees F for 5-7 minutes or until crust gets golden on the edges. Remove from oven and top with avocado.

Yum!

A Childhood Dream

Since I was a child, my mom and I would watch cooking shows together. I've always seen this magical, do-it-all machine on so many of these programs: the beloved Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Oh, how I wanted one! My parents didn't have one. Our home economics class we took in junior high school didn't have them. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, friend's families.... I swear nobody owned one! I never even used one myself in my 24 years!

Recently I won a contest on SparkPeople! My prize: a $250 gift card on Amazon.com!

Originally I told myself I'd save it for a couple of months until I move into the more bike-able city of Cincinnati and buy a bike. However, my 6-year-old self screamed at me the other day. "Buy the mixer!" she told me. "You can finally buy it! What's stopping you??" I further convinced myself that buying a bicycle should be done in person, not online.

Next thing I knew...

I bought it!!!


I got it in Gloss Cinnamon. It should arrive by Thursday. I'm absolutely enthralled!

I had some money to spare with my gift card, so I also purchased some reusable produce bags and reusable drinking straws. Goin' green (or at least pretending, haha)!

Well, I'm going to be late for work. I just had to scream this off the rooftops!

Gimme gimme gimme!

Must. Get.
Puff pastry dough! Sure, sounds so basic and "duh"-worthy, but while browsing through recipes linked to on Tastespotting, so many of the yummy and easy ones call for puff pastry dough! It seems to be so multi-faceted (in that it can be used in both sweet and savory recipes) that I obviously must buy some in the near future!

Just. Purchased.

A Norpro 18-Piece Pastry Decorating Kit! I feel like this will be very useful since I've recently become a fan of baking. Making some filled stuff and frosting things a lot nicer than I have been should be fun! I have a bit of an Amazon gift card to spend so it went towards this lovely item!

In somewhat related news, I'm going to start a new page on my blog that will show what I currently use in my kitchen and things that I want to buy (whether feasible or not, haha). I'm also going to be working on updating the "Favorite Foodie Finds" page... I just need to think of some other things to throw on there, or just get out more and discover things worthy of blabbing about!