Chickizza

Possibly my best invention his far.

Chickizza. 

Ingredients:

Olive oil

Butter

Chicken breasts

Pizza sauce of choice

Pizza cheese of choice

Pizza toppings of choice

Heat oven to 400

Put the chicken breast into a large heavy plastic bag, and pound out the chicken breasts until they are very thin. These will be your pizza crusts, so make them even and very thin.

Stack them on a plate next to the stove so you can season and cook them without having to drip chicken all over your kitchen.

Put a big heavy skillet on the stove on medium high heat and warm ypur olive oil and melt your butter.

Sprinkle the chicken with salt and place the salted side down. Salt the other side once it's in the pan. Brown the chicken breasts in the pan, on both sides, putting one or two at a time, based on how big your skillet is.

Place the browned and cooked through chicken breasts on a foil lined baking sheet.

Now you have your zero carb and gluten free pizza crusts.

We put on typical red style marinara pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella, and pepperoni.

Oops... I forgot a pre-cooked picture with pepperoni.

They went into the 400 degree oven for 8 minutes. We thin key could have stood a full 10 to really melt the cheese, but we were too excited to try them, so we pulled them out at 8 minutes.

As you can see, I made 6. Conner ate 1, Mr. Saucy and I had 2 each, and he took one for lunch today. The girl had leftover Mac-N-Cheese, and we were all totally ok with that, because it meant more Chickizza for us.

I honestly took one bite and fell in love. I then took a second bite and knew I had to run a taste next door. I put another bite on my fork, put on my shoes, ran out of the house, scared he wee-hawkin out of my neighbors husband who was working on the car in the driveway in the dark, rang the doorbell, shoved the fork into my neighbors mouth, high fives her when I saw her eyes light up, yen turned and ran back hime to finish my supper. 

It's totally going in the regular rotation of The Saucy Dish family dished. Our Friday night pizza movie nights will no longer involve heating a frozen pizza or ordering delivery.

Hello Chickizza. I love you.

Stay Saucy, and Dish.

Almond Awesome Brownies

I found a recipient for regular brownies in a cookbook, then changed everything around to suit my tastes. 

I wanted to use almond flour, but I didn't have any, so I made my own using roasted plain almonds I had saved in the freezer. I think the container I had was a pound (but I'm not swearing to it, so buy extra and freeze what you don't use.) I put them into the food processor and whirred them into a mixture of a course grind and a medium grind. I wanted a slight crunch from the nuts, but I'm not a fan of huge pieces of nuts in my brownies. I'm very much a texture girl, and consistence is a big deal for me. The only thing really crunchy I want in my brownie is the crunchy chocolatey edges.

After I had the course ground almond flour in the mixture, I wanted/needed more flour, so I put the remaining half of the almonds back into the food processor, and let it go until it was almost almond butter. I saved my leftover flour in the fridge in a plastic resealable container.

In deciding which brownies to make, I had thought of making a peanut butter swirl, so if I had gone too far with grinding my almonds, I would have had almond butter, so I would have just added that and made an almond butter swirl brownie. 

But I stopped it just short, and had beautiful fine ground almond flour.

This is all important, because y'all know I don't measure. I try sometimes, but then I do what I want and what I think will work. For instance, I added more total flour than the original recipe called for. I added double vanilla because I LOVE the good stuff. I added double the salt because I love sweet and salty. The recipe below is what I used. If you don't like sweet and salty together, only use half of the salt listed. But these were seriously incredibly tasty. 

So... Here goes...

1 C sugar (I'm going to use coconut crystals or dates next time)

1/2 C coconut oil

2 teaspoons VERY GOOD vanilla extract

2 eggs

2/3 C course/medium grind almond flour

1/3 to 1/2 C fine ground almond flour (reserved)

3/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or other large granule salt

Heat oven to 350

Grease a square 8x8 or 9x9 with coconut oil.

Mix sugar, coconut oil, vanilla, and eggs in a bowl big enough to mix it all in. (I used a wooden spoon, didn't need a mixer.)

Stir in the course/medium almond flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. 

Add enough of the fine ground almond flour to make a thick, dough type "batter"

Spread the batter in the pan evenly.

Bake 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick in center comes out without liquid chocolate on it. You don't want it "clean", because they'll be dry, but you'll want to make sure they're done.

Cut into 16 squares, and enjoy. Or hide them from everyone, and gobble them all up yourself.

Baking My First Gluten Free Bread

Here's the recipe from the back of the "Bloomfield Farms Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Mix". 

I'll be using this recipe again with different gluten free flour blends in the future, and I'll report back on the quality. I found this box at HomeGoods, in Gainesville Virginia.

But here's what I did differently than what the package said.

I used all the exact quantities and ingredients listed. Not being a baker, or a chemist, I do tend to follow measurements when baking. 

Sometimes. 

So, I let the yeast bloom in the warm water and sugar.

I cracked the 3 eggs directly into the bread machine's pan. I put the salt directly in with the eggs. I put the flour in, then poured the melted butter onto the flour, being careful to not let the warm butter "cook" the eggs on contact. I put the honey in, then poured the bloomed water, yeast, sugar mixture on top. I turned it onto its "Basic White" setting, and let it do it's thing. I have the same Zojirushi bread maker I bought 20 years ago (OH MY GOD, can that be RIGHT? Am I that old? CRAP!) and it's still making fantastic bread! It cost a flipping arm and a leg, but after 20 years, still worth every penny.

This being my first home baking experience of GF bread, I didn't know what to expect. It didn't look like it was mixing, so I helped it with a wooden spoon. After several more minutes, it still didn't look like it was fully mixing, so I stirred it MORE. It didn't form a smooth ball like I'm use to. It didn't look anything like any bread I've ever made. It looked like a mixture of pancake and buscuit dough. But, it rose. It smelled like bread, and it was rising. Science is science, so let's just let the yeast and heat do it's thing. Remember, this was an experiment, and I was really just hoping for a minimal "bread-like" substance that I could cube up, toast into croutons, then make into dressing.

I let it go through it's full cooling cycle, then out it came. Bread knife in hand, room temp 1 Tb butter on counter waiting, I cut about a 1" slice off the top (which wasn't poofed up like you usually see bread, in fact, it was sunken and looked like a dried bowl of oatmeal), spread the butter on it, and took a bite. 

Yyyyyyyuuuuuummmmmmm.... Warm, soft, great texture, amazing flavor, with a great crumb and crust. Oh yes... This is GOOD!! I even shared it with the kids! Nope, I didn't hide it, or even tell them that it was "special mommy/daddy" bread, which I may or may not have done in the past.

It will be made again. Oh yes... It will be made again.

SH & PWYF.