Fried onions. Do tell.

That pizza sounded fantastic. Were the onions put on raw or sauteed?

I can't help but interject an observation: it is difficult to be depressed while standing over a pan of sauteeing onions (or garlic).

That's very true. Onions and/or garlic in my good Calphalon make me quite happy. Happiest once they're served, but quite happy while I'm preparing them.

I saute'd them once again - but not for long...they still had their crunch.. a little olive oil, butter ....I put the mushrooms on raw. Oh yeah...hub ate 4 slices. That is a sure sign. :-)

I think I'm just going to buy a bag of onions already. I had been buying them one at a time but frankly we're eating them too quickly to do that any more.

Last night it was chilly and we were doing dinner on our own. RP opened a can of soup. I don't eat canned soup so I improvised. Here's what I came up with:


It was soup. It was good. It was easy. It was hot and filling. Yay!

Reminds me of another thing to do with onions and pizza --

I used to carmelize onions while moderately heating the oven/pizza stone w/cornmeal, then roll the dough, put dough on now somewhat warm stone (always amusing), spread onions haphazardly on dough, shut the oven door, turn the oven heat up some more...

I've never gotten into the pizza peel thing, and I hate a floury pizza bottom or trusting the dough will slide every time.
My dough is rolled relatively thin, and usually has some, uh, waves or crinkles when I put it on the stone ... to better catch some pizza topping goodness, in my opinion. Sometimes I just put the dough on the pan or stone outside the oven but I like it best the first way. Daymmm, I need a new pizza stone. (Left mine back in north north, on purpose, as I was watching freight weight.)

(off topic Beth - sorry)
Osso...what was your pizza dough recipe? I used a packaged one and I made it kind of tough. The last time I made it I did fine...but it was not as good as last time last night...though obviously the toppings helped it tremendously - it was delicious. Could have been better had my dough turned out better.

I use Carol Field's basic napoletana recipe in the Italian Baker (major favorite book for me - some of the pages are wonders of crinkling and drip spots, opening right up by themselves to my favorite bread recipes) -

quoting.. asterisks mine

makes one 15- to 16-inch pizza, 2 medium size, or 5 or 6 small pizzas
[*I multiply the recipe and freeze dough packets, not the brightest thing to do as it's never quite as good as the fresh]

1 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast or 2/3 small cake (12 grams) fresh yeast
pinch sugar
1 1/3 cups warm water
1/4 cup olive oil, plus additional for brushing the crust
3 3/4 cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons (8 grams) salt (if using anchovies in the topping, reduce the salt to a pinch

[*I make the dough by hand; she gives directions for mixer and processor too]
BY HAND
Stir the yeast and sugar into the water in a large mixing bowl; let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in the oil. Mix the flour and salt and stir, 1 cup at a time, into the yeast mixture, beating well to get all the lumps out. Knead on a lightly floured surface until soft and satiny but firm, about 8 minutes.

And so on.

per the CooksTalk gang, tile from the hardware store is the way to go. A number of them have 4 large tiles in the oven at all times.

You're in the perfect location for getting the best tiles.

offtopic?

I think pizza and onions are a perfect combo - and my initial post encouraged digression to other veggies (and what is pizza but a fancy veggie tray?)

I have a lot of tiles, from when I was picking a floor tile and didn't return samples in a timely manner. Even looked up if I could use them, read some no-no's about breakage. But... they're not the saltillo terra cotta kind. Hmmm, I'll check that out some more. The pizza stones are expensive for me.

Find the tiles?

~~~

We're out of onions and it's Thanksgiving! Ack!

I used the last ones yesterday, in the roaster under chicken pieces. What are the odds that any of the veggie stands will be open today? Ack!

Haven't looked. I think I'll just try one of the ones I have. What can happen, it explodes? Will report when I make some pizza..

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just realized that I didn't link in any of the Taunton discussions on the tiles. I think I got too caught up in re-reading a couple of them that night.

I do recall that one of the women has 6 smaller tiles that were $0.60/tile. She says they're great not just for the pizza, but for maintaining pre-heated oven temps. Other folks warm the oven, turn it off, and then put bread in to rise on the slightly warm tiles (I can't imagine me having great success with that).

Edit : did you see Bittman's whole wheat no-knead bread recipe? I posted it the other night.

No - but will look: I check Bittman every few weeks back to when I last looked at it.

I still haven't done the no-knead thing, and I mean to. I'd like to combine that method, or at least play with combining it, with some of Carol Field's particular rustic breads recipes.

I stopped messing around.. Hung a ten pund bag of onions in the garage.

Graceful in defeat

Lots of harvest specials on here these days, so I nabbed 10 pounds of Yukon Gold taters, 10 pounds of red-skin potatoes, 5 pounds of yellow cooking onions, 5 pounds of red onions, 5 pounds of carrots. There will be a lot of good hearty veggie soups in our future.

Two nails in the wall now.
Mr. Onion bag, meet Mr. Potato bag.