I will try to keep this page up to date with current recipes for beer, pizza, and whatever other things I feel have been particularly successful. In order to keep things slim and to save myself some time in repeating myself, this page only contains recipes that do not appear in posts. Otherwise, the link to the recipe will simply direct you to the relevant post. For beer recipes, the posts reviewing the brew in question can be found by pingback links. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will be quick to clarify any points of the process.
Pizza:
Beer:
- Shiitake, Asparagus, & Parmesan
This pie has no sauce and has a longer bake to give the crust cracker-like consistency. For the yield below you can probably feed two or three people depending on their appetite. This pizza made its debut in a pairing with my Heavy Seas Gold Ale Clone.
Yield: about two 12″ pies
Ingredients:
- 5.5 oz bread flour (about 1 cup)
- 5.5 oz whole wheat flour (about 1 cup)
- 0.75 cup + 2 tbsp warm water (about 65% hydration)
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 0.5 tsp sugar
- Half packet dry yeast (1.125 tsp)
- Bunch of asparagus (about 12 stalks)
- 1.5-2 cups shiitake mushrooms, sliced with stems removed
- 4 oz shredded or shaved Parmesan
- Salt and olive oil for brushing
- See basic dough recipe for instructions on how to prepare pizza dough.
- Rinse your asparagus, and carefully shave it with a vegetable peeler, a grater, or whatever your favorite kitchen gadget is for doing such things. Whatever you do, seriously, be careful. The only accidents I’ve ever had in the kitchen other than minor burns are while grating vegetables. I have a nearly 100% incidence rate of cutting one of my fingers or knuckles.
- Rinse the mushrooms and remove their stems. Thinly slice the caps.
- Preheat the oven to about 500 degrees F. While the oven is preheating, dust a baking sheet with flour, and place a dough ball on it. Punch the ball in the center to flatten it, and begin to using your fingers to stretch it into a circle. Try to get it as thin as possible, but be careful not to tear the dough and try to avoid pressing it into the baking sheet.
- At this point I transfer it to a pizza pan, which has holes in the bottom to allow more heat transfer to the dough via convection in the oven, but you can bake this just as well on a baking sheet. I do not (currently) recommend baking this on a stone, steel, or any other surface designed to provide a fast bake. I will continue to experiment with this, but for the desired crust, it seems a longer, cooler bake is necessary. I therefore do not recommend that you max out your oven’s temperature and do not recommend a stone. A pizza pan seems to be a good balance between the baking sheet and the stone to get a dense, crisp, cracker crust.
- Brush the top of the dough with a mixture of oil and salt (or even garlic salt). Be wary of using too much salt. Top the dough with the parmesan first, then the mushrooms, then the asparagus. Obviously, each pizza should get about half of the toppings. I found that the amounts I prescribe above to be appropriate.
- Put the pizza into the oven. I place it on a rack placed closer to the bottom of the oven with my stones placed on a rack above. This leads to more even cooking of the top and bottom of the pizza by providing enhance convection and radiation of heat in the gap between the pizza and the stones. I haven’t yet tried it without the stones, but I expect the effect is relatively small, especially since the bake time will probably be 15+ minutes. When the pizza is finished, the crust should be a uniform walnut brown and the asparagus should be just beginning to take on a little scorching from the heat along the edges in spots.
- Basic Sauce
If I’m making a tomato based pie, then I either use this sauce or simply finely chop some whole tomatos (canned or fresh). This recipe from Slice is great, producing a full-flavored sauce. The only modifications I make are using slighly less butter and oil, and about half of the sugar.
Pizza & Beer 
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