The Dodgy Yank

Zachary’s Chicago-Style Pizza

By Sean | August 2, 2008

CALIFORNIAN CHICAGO-STYLE STUFFED PIZZA

“Zach Zachowski and his wife and partner, Barbara Gabel, lived in Chicago for many years, where they fell in love with deep-dish pizza (and each other), but not the blustery winters. They headed west in 1982. Zachowski, who had worked in several Chicago pizzerias, quickly discovered that there was nothing like this hearty Midwest favorite in California. He adapted what he knew to the Californian palate - lightening things up a bit by swapping out the heavy, dense sauce for a fresh, chunky tomato mixture and using a bit less oil in the dough. In the dough. J.P. LaRussa, who has been with Zacharyâ€™s in Oakland. California since it opened twenty-two years ago and is now the general manager, has this advice for the home pizza cook who wants to tackle deep-dish: You can spend an entire day making one pizza. Make it a family affair. A project for a rainy dayâ€™”

FOR THE DOUGH:
1 tablespoon sugar
1 package active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 to 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 (12 or 14-inch) deep dish pizza pan
FOR THE SAUCE:
Olive oil, enough to coat a saucepan
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 pounds fresh Roma tomatoes, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
1 (8 ounce) can tomato purÃ©e
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh basil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
FOR THE STUFFING:
- Your favorite cheeses (Zachary’s uses mostly shredded mozzarella)
- Fresh raw vegetables (diced or sliced)
- Your choice of meats (pepperoni, linguica, uncooked Italian sausage, ground beef, etc.)

TO MAKE THE DOUGH:
In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar and the yeast in the water. Let stand until bubbly.

Stir in the oil. Stir in 4 cups of flour until smooth. Slowly mix in more flour as needed to form a firm dough ball. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it’s smooth and elastic.

Lightly grease another bowl and transfer the dough into it. Turn the dough once in the bowl to coat the dough with oil. Allow the dough to rise until it doubles in size.

Punch down the dough and let it rest for another 10 minutes. After resting, the dough is ready to use for pizza.

TO MAKE THE SAUCE:
While the dough is resting, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and lightly saute it to infuse the oil, about 3 minutes. Then stir in the tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano, basil, and salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

TO ASSEMBLE THE PIZZA:
Preheat oven to 475 degrees F (245C).

On a lightly floured surface, roll two-thirds of the dough into a 16-inch circle. Press the dough into a 12-inch or 14-inch round deep-dish pizza pan, making sure that the dough is pressed against the sides of the pan and extends up and over the rim.

Add your favorite cheeses and ingredients to fill the pan roughly halfway.

Roll the remaining dough to form another 16-inch circle. Place it over the pizza pan and seal the sides of the pizza together. Poke several holes through the top layer of dough. Cut off any excess dough near the top rim of the pan.

Pour the tomato sauce over the top layer of dough. If desired, top with other ingredients, such as fresh pesto sauce or artichoke hearts.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.

Bake at 475 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.

Makes one 12-to-14-inch deep-dish pizza (a 12-inch pizza serves 3-4; a 14-inch serves 4-5)
From: Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel (co-owners of Zachary’s)
Source: Everybody Loves Pizza by Penny Pollack and Jeff Ruby

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RSS Explained

By Sean | July 11, 2008

Now go forth and sign up for Google Reader.

Topics: Technology | No Comments |

ID4

By Sean | July 4, 2008

Happy Independence Day to my friends, family, and colleagues in ‘the states.Â I keep trying to explain July 4th to the colonials ’round here, but I lose them when I get to the tea party part of the story.Â Se la vis.

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World of World of Warcraft

By Sean | June 22, 2008

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

Topics: Funny ha-ha | No Comments |

Congrats!

By Sean | June 22, 2008

Congrats to Steve & Marigold who welcomed their second son, Milo Sylvester, in to the world last week.Â Be sure to head on over to their blog for all the details!

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Cleaning Up

By Sean | June 16, 2008

And now, an entry from my inner-geek..

Over the years I’ve employed various personal digital devices in an effort to keep myself organized. I did fairly well with my first couple of Palm devices, but over the years problems with synchronization, Propeller Hat incompatibilities, and the proliferation of different sites and services have allowed me to create a hodgepodge of partially complete, at least somewhat accurate information. So at the end of the day, my Blackberry might know how to reach you, but it probably can’t tell me where you live. My e-mail client will know exactly how to send someone a note, but I would have rustle around to find their number.

A “smart phone” is really only as effective as the data it harbors. As the old adage goes - garbage in, garbage out. In a matter of weeks, I’ll be gleefully unboxing arguably one of the most compelling “smart” phones ever conceived in the form of an iPhone 3G. Rather than walking around with the coolest, most capable, severely impaired gadget on the planet, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and combine contact details from Google, Yahoo, AOL, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, and my mobile phone into one nicely scrubbed, sterile repository prior to my first sync. The finished product will replace all of my present (compatible) databases and usher in a new age of computing computing nirvana.

Sounds great! Let’s do it!

The process sounds easier than it actually is. Each application or service has a distinct method for deciding how to acquire a contact and the kind of data the application will record. Additionally, some of the sites that harbor data provide plenty of ways to easily input information, but they won’t easily return it. LinkedIn, for example, allows its users to export their contacts in a variety of file formats. By contrast, I couldn’t identify a simple way to extract contact details from my face-friends - at least not for a lowly Mac user like me.

As a Mac aficionado, I elected to use Apple’s somewhat-neglected but quite capable Address Book application. In order to keep my favorite application suite in tune (and to avoid incurring wrath from a certain often-vocal technologist who resides in “the whale’s vagina“) I’ve also flipped the switch on the Google Sync option.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve spent the bulk of my travel and layover time on crashing data from all these sources together, and today I spent the afternoon de-duping and supplementing the combined database with information from less cooperative sources. I finished the final sweep about an hour ago. The end result - 464 highly refined, properly formatted, (allegedly) accurate records.

This might not seem all that nifty to you, dear reader, but to information system junkies like myself, bringing that much data into harmonious synchronicity with their respective services definitely gets my propeller twirling.Â The day of the omniscient digital Rolodex is finally at hand.

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