Arugula and other veggies rock!
Let’s not overthink this (too late…) The “good food/bad food” thinking makes me sad. What’s good or bad is how much or how often you eat it. Pizza once a week? Goooooood. Pizza every day? Baaaaaad (the amount, not the pizza.) Don’t make it more complicated than that, you know? I’m a 5’10" very mediocre lady cyclist who bounces around between 145 to 150lbs based on the direction of the wind, phases of the moon and local pollen count…which means I have no clue why it changes most of the time, it just does because that’s what bodies do. I pay more attention to what I should put in my tummy than what I shouldn’t, and that seems to work out pretty well. By the time I eat everything I should try to eat more of, there’s not much room for the “shouldn’t eat so much of this” stuff. I’m always surprised when athletes stress out this much about a food.
I’m in the “Friday night is pizza night” camp, too. Frozen, take-out, whatever. And I don’t eat a lot of meat, but I’ll enjoy some pepperoni if that’s what the hubs picks. I don’t freak. So have some damn pizza. If you eat too much pizza, jump on the scale the next morning and have gained .0027kg or whatever micromeasure of weight makes your heart pound, just chug some water and make some trips to the loo. Wala. Weight “problem” fixed. Pizza for the win!
5 Likes
And ice cream!
1 Like
Once a month I treat myself and my family to our favorite Parmesan Chicken pizza at High Five. No way do I ever feel guilty for eating it. I just make sure there’s a long endurance workout the next day in case I do.
7 Likes
Napoli is also in the West.
2 Likes
Tell me more a out your sourdough! I’m usually using industrial yeast to get things going, but wanted to try sourdough for a long time, so far my attempts to get a good starter going have been futile 
I have similar love/love relationship with chocolate 
Following pretty healthy diet and 20gr dark chocolate (70%) is daily part of morning breakfast. Due slightly bitter taste it takes couple weeks to get to used to it but after dropping other regular sweets it tastes really sweet now.
As with pizza, there is good healthy chocolate and not-so-healthy chocolate (but still good for different reasons).
1 Like
Pizza is the ultimate food. It has carbs from the dough/crust. It has fat and protein from the cheese. Throw some veggies on there for vitamins and stuff. Eat a bunch and it’s easy calories for big training days. Has everything endurance athletes need.
Don’t @ me.
4 Likes
I had a few failed attempts at creating a starter as well, so my wife bought me one from King Arthur Flour for Christmas. It works great, I bake with it pretty much every weekend and leave it in the refrigerator during the week.
Obviously modify the bread recipe to make pizza, but here’s how to make a starter:
What so bad about pizza?..they taste disgusting 
…although that is probably just me - never liked it or KFC, McDonalds, Burger king etc - do like a good kebab though with lots of chilli sauce 
The pizza in Italy was amazing! As I recall, the options are far fewer compared to those in the US, but Italian pizza proves simple is sometimes best.
That being said, I am American and do love my cheese, anchovy, and onion pizza. 
1 Like
I feel your starter woes, mine took a while to become reliable. I started mine in the Spring last year. It’s all about the balance of bacterial and yeast strains becoming optimised, in my case it took the temperature of my apartment dropping a bit in the Autumn for that to happen. Once it got in balance though, it became super reliable regardless of how the environment changes.
I’ve been playing around with my pizza dough recipe for a few months now, I started out with the recipe from The Perfect Loaf, and gradually modified it to find what works well for my available flour, and baking equipment. One thing you’ll find with sourdough is that the flour you have changes everything. Recipes are just starting points, because different brands of flours react so differently to different amounts of water and your specific starter culture. It’s actually pretty crazy how different. Anyway, the recipe from The Perfect Loaf is for two 12" pizzas which he bakes on an oven steel. I don’t have one of those, so I use a 10" cast iron pan, which meant changing the recipe a bit. My recipe below is to make 3 10" pizzas in the cast iron. Basically I follow all the same steps as in the Perfect Loaf recipe, until the baking stage. For that I pop the pizza into the screaming hot cast iron pan on the stove top element. Once I start to see wisps of smoke, I check the bottom for a bit of char, and then move the pan to the oven under the broiler until the top looks good. The bottom will continue to cook a bit in the oven as well, but most of the char happens on the burner.
My dough recipe:
Tipo 00 Flour 342g
Whole Red Fife Flour 38g
Sourdough Starter @ 100% hydration 57g
Salt 11g
Water 255g
Bollocks to the whole grains with pizza.
I learned this recipe from her TV show in '90 or so, and it fed me through my twenties.
I do the very un Italian move of making the dough thick, so it’s more carb-dense. Very light cheese, and then summer vegetables – tomatoes or zucchini (basil pesto and zucchini is a fine pizza) or peppers, maybe chard as a concession to health.
This also makes a fine bread dough.
Roman pizza al taglio is thick-crust – basically focaccia with (limited) toppings.
1 Like
How do you get the pizza into the pan? Is it some nifty pizza peel work? Or do you drop in the dough and then quickly add toppings?
Still waiting on my sourdough… got the bubble action happening but no increase in volume. My place is on the cool side though, ~68 degrees F during the day cooler at night. Will continue to replace and feed.
With that being said, I think we need a deep dive into this pizza topic on the pod.
Favorite pizza in the P13 household…
Pizza dough form Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods
Grilled Chicken
Grilled veggie mix (red peppers, yellow peppers, zucchini…all chopped and diced)
Red Sauce
Easy cheese
Cooked on the grill…super easy to do. Pre-grill chicken and veggies, set aside. Roll out dough, put on pre-heated grill for ~5 min to cook one side and get some grill marks. Remove dough, bring inside. Turn over and put toppings on the grilled side. Put back on grill for ~5 min to grill the other side of the dough.
Slice and enjoy.
Another easy option is an EVOO base, minced garlic, prosciutto and shredded mozzarella cheese. Follow above cooking direction and then top with arugula, dressed with lemon juice and EVOO. You can also substitute fig jam for the EVOO / garlic base.
1 Like
Sweet. Now i just need to track down my old Campy Pinarello from the early nineties, and I’ve nailed my poseur power!
Everywhere is in the West of somewhere.
4 Likes