While watching my alma mater make it into the national championship I was enjoying a treat inspired by many a dinner in Case Hall: Spartan Sausage Bread. It is just regular sausage bread but prepared in a Michigan State cafeteria, or in this case, by a Michigan State fan and alumnus. I’d like to think my making this bread contributed in no small way to tonight’s win, so in the interest of the national championship I wanted to make sure everyone has the recipe for Monday.

Start with a Midwestern-American style pizza dough; I used Peter Reinhart’s from American Pie. Mix together:

• 11 1/4 oz flour
• 1 1/2 T honey
• 1 t salt
• 1 t instant yeast
• 1/8 c vegetable oil
• 1/2 c 2% milk
• 3 oz water

Stir/knead everything together for a few minutes. Allow to rest for five minutes and then knead another two. Divide into two equal balls, place in oiled bags, and refrigerate for as long as possible. You need to have them back on the counter and rising two hours before you want to bake them.

When the dough is ready, pat and roll it out into a large rectangle if you can manage it, but probably more like an oval.

Cover it with 1/2# of your favorite Italian sausage, browned, and shredded cheese (either your favorite cheese or whatever happened to be skulking in the back of your freezer).

At this point, it’s ready to roll. You might want to use a bench scraper to avoid tearing the dough as you roll it into a loaf. When you have done this with both dough balls, hopefully you intuited that you need to have a 375° oven roaring. 

Because this was the Final Four, I decided to get fancy and brush both loaves with egg wash then sprinkle them with salt before baking them for 40 minutes. They came out deep brown:

Now your excitement will be palpable, but they still need to cool. Luckily, a riveting first half kept me glued to the TV so that by the time half time rolled around, my delicious snack was ready.

Go Green! Go White!

I’ve been craving McDonald’s sausage biscuits all week for some reason, but the grocery store is closer than McDonald’s. Buttermilk is a wonderful thing.

Here are four pizzas I made recently. I remembered to move the pizza stone to the oven floor so I got a nice char on the crust. In all of them but the first, the cheese blend is asiago, fontina, and mozzarella. For my tomato sauce, I take a can of tomatoes and pulse them a bit in the food processor, then mix in red pepper flakes, dried oregano, salt, black pepper, some kind of acid (lemon juice or red wine vinegar) and sometimes sugar if the tomatoes need the help.

Pizza Margherita

Not much to say about this classic combination: basil, sauce, mozzarella.

Hot Italian sausage and fennel. This is an idea I got after eating it at La Rinata. It’s a great pairing since the sausage already has fennel seeds in it.

The Wedge has really great fire roasted tomatoes that are in the refrigerated case across from the butcher. They are quite sweet and intensely flavored as you would expect fire-roasted tomatoes to be. I also got marinated artichoke hearts in a jar from the Wedge but they were nothing special. It’s the tomatoes that made this pizza a nice treat in February.

This last pizza had shiitake mushrooms, ham and taleggio cheese, in addition to the usual sauce and cheese blend. I sauteed the shiitakes before starting the pizzas to get rid of their extra moisture and brown them. The ham was Black Forest ham that we had in the fridge and needed using up. The nicest surprise for me in this pizza was the taleggio cheese. I saw a recipe for a pizza that was just crust stuffed with taleggio a few years ago (on Emeril Live I am afraid to say) and was intrigued, but could never find taleggio. When I saw it in the dairy case at the Wedge I knew I needed to buy it, even if I didn’t have an idea for how to use it. When I got home I inspected further: the cheese has a very funky cheese smell but its flavor is actually pretty mild, creamy like brie but more surprising in its flavor. I thought it would go pretty well with the rich ham and mushrooms and I was right. If they still have taleggio next time I am at the Wedge and thinking of pizza, I will have to try a cheese and dough pie.