Pizza Dough from the Pioneer Woman and Parmesan-Dijon Chicken/Pork from Betty Crocker

I tried a new pizza crust this weekend.  It is so easy and so good that I made it twice.  I am using one batch of dough for two pizzas.  This recipe is from The Pioneer Woman. I love her TV show and I love her blog.  Well, I love her recipes too.  I tossed out my Bread Machine (AKA: my pizza crust dough maker) recently due to a broken part so I've been trying to find a recipe I can make with my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. This recipe calls for the paddle attachment as opposed to the dough hook. I think the paddle did a better job mixing the ingredients as compared to the dough hook.  I still found I had to stop the mixer, pull the dough away from the paddle, and mix again a few times to feel as if I was really mixing the sticky dough.  Otherwise it kind of felt like I was just spinning the dough around on the paddle inside the bowl.  The first time I used the crust, I let it sit on the counter top for a few hours in an oiled, covered bowl. The dough was super soft and very easy to stretch into shape.  The second time I used the dough it had been refrigerated overnight but I let it come up to room temperature by resting it on the counter top (in a gallon sized plastic zip closed bag) for several hours before using. The refrigerated dough was a little tougher to work with (it wanted to spring back as opposed to staying stretched out into shape).  Something mysterious happens to dough. I am sure some scientist could explain it to me... something to do with the gluten I imagine.   

Pizza Crust from "The Pioneer Woman"

Ingredients

• FOR THE CRUST (MAKES TWO CRUSTS):
• 1 teaspoon Active Dry Or Instant Yeast
• 4 cups All-purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
• ⅓ cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Preparation Instructions

TO MAKE THE CRUST:
Sprinkle yeast over 1 1/2 cups warm (not lukewarm) water.
In a mixer, combine flour and salt. With the mixer running on low speed (with paddle attachment), drizzle in olive oil until combined with flour. Next, pour in yeast/water mixture and mix until just combined.
Coat a separate mixing bowl with a light drizzle of olive oil, and form the dough into a ball. Toss to coat dough in olive oil, then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and store in the fridge until you need it. ***It’s best to make the dough at least 24 hours in advance, and 3 or 4 days is even better.

I used the crust to make two Buffalo Chicken Pizzas.  My entire family loves this pizza!  My husband grilled the chicken on our grill outdoors. We've finally had enough rain that the Sheriff could lift the fire ban (which restricted outdoor grilling).

Made some No Chop Chili for my husband for the week.

I tried another new recipe this week.  This recipe comes from Betty Crocker.  I signed up to get e-mails from this website and they have a lot of really good looking recipes.  I made a recipe called Parmesan-Dijon Chicken Monday night.   The recipe calls for six chicken breasts but I cut each breast into three smaller portions and reduced the cooking time a bit.  I ate some of the breaded pieces of chicken for lunch but also made some sandwiches with the breaded chicken (bun, lettuce, mayo).... MmmmMmmm GOOD!

As I was eating the sandwich, I kept thinking the recipe might work well with pork.  I used a pork tenderloin which was not quite 1 1/2 pounds and cut it into medallions.  The flavor is very good but I could not get the crust to crisp up. We had sandwiches with the breaded pork tenderloin and we all liked them.  We all agreed it would be better if the crust was more crunchy.   I might give this recipe a try again with the thin, boneless pork chops I see at the store.  The Parmesan-Dijon Chicken recipe can be found here if you'd like to give it a try.  It is great on chicken breasts.  I just need to do a bit more tweaking to make it work with pork.