Potato Flatbread Pizza

Sunday, August 20, 2006
If you like good food, I urge you to go buy The Bread Bibleand make this pizza. If you like good food and you don't like to cook, I urge you to find someone who does and wheedle them into baking this pizza for you. It's that good.
The dough is just made with flour, a little sugar, yeast, salt, butter, and mashed potato. I had some baby new potatoes, and I cooked those and mashed them; I'd recommend using Idaho potatoes because the new ones got a little gummy when I mashed them, although it didn't seem to make much difference in the finished product. After the dough rises, you shape it onto a pizza pan and let it rise a little more. The topping I used was sauteed red onions and spinach, sauteed mushrooms with garlic, crushed red pepper, and rosemary, and bacon bits. After the pizza baked for about five minutes, you take it out, put dollops of mascarpone cheese on it, then the toppings, and bake for another five minutes. Then, when it's done, strew on some grated parmesan.
The crust is both tender and crispy, and it's by far the most delicious pizza dough I've ever had, which may be because it actually has flavor and isn't just a cardboard-like base for a bunch of good things. My favorite pizzas have always been the cracker-thin pizzas available as appetizers at Auriga
Those are very, very good, but they're not as good as the pizzas now available from my very own kitchen. I'm thinking that from now on, Sunday nights are pizza nights at the Wolf house.