Pies and Pints | Sausage, Fontina, and Egg Pizza

Last summer and fall, my dear roommate and I made a tradition.  We went to a marvelous weekly event called Burgers and Beers at our local liquor store, The Party Source, where we'd enjoy a gourmet burger (new toppings each week!) with stunning array of beer samples (a new theme with new beers each week!).  It was very much a tradition because we only missed a handful of these weekly gatherings over the course of 3 months.  We eagerly anticipated every Thursday, even the perilous part of the short drive from work to The Party Source, when you're fighting to merge across two lanes of traffic to the exit while those two lanes are, perversely, trying to merge onto the highway, directly into you.  And all this happens on a very short bridge.  It makes you wonder how traffic planners could be so dense at times...but that's another thing entirely.  The important thing is we made and loved this tradition of Burgers and Beers.

Since Burgers and Beers doesn't happen during the winter, we decided to create another weekly tradition -- Pies and Pints!  Inspired by another event at The Party Source, Pies and Pints was a chance to try gourmet riffs on pizza pies paired with different beers (hence the pints part, though I'm not sure if the samples were a full pint...).  We've never been to a Pies and Pints at The Party Source, so we have the freedom to make it entirely our own.  Each week, we're going to make a different type of pizza and enjoy it with a different beer.

It's quickly become our new favorite tradition. Especially since it immediately follows our boxing class where we get to pound out the week's frustrations.

Cheers to our inaugural session of Pies and Pints!

This week's Pies and Pints selections....

• Pizza:  Sausage, Fontina, and Egg, inspired by a dish from a local restaurant, A Tavola
• Pizza Crust:  Rushed dough recipe from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
• Beer:  Mt. Caramel Brewery's Amber Ale - A Cincinnati local!

Rushed Pizza Dough

from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Makes one 12oz. dough (approximately 1 medium/large pizza)
Requires 10-15 minutes prep + 30 minutes to rise

Dough Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water (about 110 - 116 degrees Farenheit)
1 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast*
1 1/2 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for the counter
1 tsp. table salt
Olive oil

Dough Preparation:

Turn your oven on to warm (about 200 - 225 degrees Farenheit) for 5 minutes; then turn it off.

If mixing the dough by hand...
Pour 1/2 cup warm water into a large mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the water, and let it stand for 5 minutes.  Add the flour, then salt, and mix with a wooden spoon until a rough, craggy mass forms. Turn dough and any loose bits out onto a lightly floured counter, and knead for 5 minutes or until a smooth, elastic dough forms.

If mixing the dough with a mixer...
Pour 1/2 cup warm water into the bowl of your electric mixer, sprinkle the yeast over the water, and let it stand for 5 minutes.  Add the flour, then salt, and mix with your dough hook at a moderate speed until the mixture starts to form a craggy mass.  Reduce thes peed to low and mix for 5 minutes, letting the hook knead the mass into a smooth elastic dough.

For either method...
Coat inside of a heat-safe mixing bowl with olive oil, place the dough back into the bowl, and lightly coat the dough with olive oil (adding a drizzle more if you need).  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the previously warmed (but now off!) oven for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.  Remove dough from the oven, turn it out onto a floured counter to roll it out for your pizza!

Before rising...

After rising...

Sausage, Fontina, and Egg Pizza

inspired by A Tavola restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio

Ingredients:

Prepared pizza dough

Garlic, chopped

Extra-virgin olive oil

Italian sausage, casings removed and cooked

Fontina cheese, sliced thinly or shredded

Fresh sage leaves, washed and roughly chopped or torn

Eggs

Pizza Preparation:

Put your pizza stone (or a baking sheet with its bottom facing up) in the middle of your oven.  Then turn your oven on to 400-500 degrees Farenheit (or whatever the instructions for your particular pizza stone say).  This is absolutely critical -- pizza stone FIRST, oven turned on SECOND.  If you reverse the order, you can break your pizza stone.  So if you forget, forgo the pizza stone and use an upturned baking sheet.  Just preheat it in the oven too, so your crust gets extra crispy.

Saute the chopped garlic in a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil over low/medium-low heat, until the garlic just barely turns golden-brown.  Remove from heat to stop cooking...or else you'll have some very burnt garlic!

Cook your sausage and convert it into pieces.  We poached the sausage in water (casings on) over medium-high heat until it was fully cooked.  We then removed the casings and cut thick slices of the sausage.

Work your pizza dough out into your preferred pizza shape - we just kinda went with oblong here.  Set up a pizza peel or another upside-down baking sheet as your assembly platform.  Dust it liberally with cornmeal.  Don't hold back, you need this for the dough to slide off the assembly platform and on to the pizza stone.  Brush the dough with your garlic + olive oil mixture, all the way to the edges to get a lovely golden-brown crust.  Top with cheese, sausage, and sage.

We also cracked an egg onto the center of the pizza before we began cooking...but....we're going to advise you to wait until your pizza is almost done before adding your egg.  Add your egg when you have 2-3 minutes remaining.

Dust your pizza stone liberally with cornmeal.  Don't be stingy, or else your pizza will be stuck on the stone!  (We don't recommend putting the cornmeal on the stone until this point, or else it burns quite a bit)  Transfer your pizza from the assembly platform to the pizza stone.  We use a spatula to help us guide the pizza as it slides (sometimes with a little shake of encouragment) off the assembly platform and onto the pizza stone.  Try to position the pizza on the stone during this transfer - it's not terribly easy to maneuver once it is on the stone, especially if your dough is thin, if you didn't use enough cornmeal, or if you have a lot of toppings.

Set your timer for 10 minutes.  When you check on your pizza, you can tailor its level of doneness to your preferences.  I like my crust deeply golden-brown and my cheese bubbling, so my pizza took about 14-15 minutes.  If you think your pizza is close to being done, add your whole egg in the center of the pizza, so it doesn't ooze off the crust.

Our thoughts on this week's selections...

• The pizza:
• A great combination of toppings.  Melty and mildly flavored cheese, spicy Italian sausage, the earthy flavor of sage and garlic, plus a delicious fried egg.  
• Sadly, our eggs were too far done to be the runny mess we were hoping for. Just imagine that velvety egg yolk oozing over the sausage and cheese....Mmmm!  Next time, we'll add the eggs a minute or two before the pizza is removed from the oven.
• The crust:
• Very quick and easy to make, thanks to warming the "room" where the dough rises.
• Good crunch on the exterior + good chew on the interior.  A winning combination in my book!
• The beer:
• Mt. Caramel's Amber Ale is my all-time favorite from this brewery.  It's a rich amber color with medium body and a great balance between roasted malt and hop flavors.  Perfect for pairing with foods, since it doesn't have any overly assertive flavors of its own but still tastes great.

Any suggestions for pizza combinations?  We're excited to try new ones!