Saturday May 4, 2013 (cornhole and pizza)

Painting and Pizza

Painting the Corn hole boards

My husband picked out the colors he wanted for the Corn hole game yesterday and was home to watch the munchkins this morning so I got to paint the corn hole boards. Luckily for me my mom was home to help me keep some very nosey dogs away from the paint and to help me tape off some patterns.

These are the boards and legs before I started painting them. For the main paint I used  a quart of Valspar Ultra, which is a 2 in one paint and primer. I chose to use an exterior paint since this game is primarily played outside.

First coat of the main paint. I did 3 coats, not because there was bleed through, but because I wanted them to be as durable as possible since these will be moved around frequently.

After the main coat dried My mom helped me tape off the areas that I was going to be painting with the accent colors. Please note that taping off circles is a royal pain!

Here are the two boards during the accent coloring process. The accent colors were the tiny Valspar sample colors that the nice lady at Lowes matched to the paint chips that the hubby picked out. They are indoor colors and did not have primer built in so they took 4 coats of paint. As with all painting there was a lot of waiting around, but the nice breeze helped speed things up a little bit.

These are the painted boards. The legs were not attached in these pictures as I was still waiting for the paint on them to dry, they are the same white as the main portion of the boards. 

My dad is going to bring them to me tomorrow since they were still drying when I had to leave, but I'll be sure to get some pictures of the whole set put together.

Pizza

One of the family's favorite things to do is make "home-made" pizzas. We usually get the crusts pre-made at the store, but today we thought we would try something new, so I made the dough from scratch. I got the recipe from Annie's Eats, I started on the dough a little bit later than I should have, it's about a 2-2.5hour process, but only requires about a half an hour of actual hands on time. It's also a fairly simple recipe since all of the ingredients can be found at pretty much any grocery store.

½ cup warm water
2¼ tsp. instant yeast
4 cups (22 oz.) bread flour, plus more for dusting
1½ tsp. salt
1¼ cup water, at room temperature
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

First you heat the 1/2 cup of water up, make sure it isn't too hot or else it will kill the yeast, then sprinkle the yeast on top and set it aside. 

Put the dry ingredients; salt and bread flour in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix lightly. 

Add the 1.25cups room temperature water and olive oil to the yeast/water mixture.

Slowly pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix with a dough hook on a slow speed until the dough is nice and smooth.

Lightly oil a large bowl.

Turn the dough into the oiled bowl and turn over one time to get oil on all sides of the dough. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and set somewhere warm for 1.5-2 hours to allow the dough to rise. I put the dough in our oven with only the light on.

This is what the dough looked like before it began to rise, by the time it was done rising it had filled the whole bowl and was pushed up against the plastic, this took about an hour and a half.

Once the dough has risen for the 1.5-2hours punch down the dough and separate it into 2 balls and knead till smooth then place either on a lightly floured surface or in 2 oiled bowls and cover lightly with a damp, NOT WET, paper towel and allow the dough to rest for 15minutes. As soon as you cover your dough preheat your oven to 500degrees.

Once the dough is rested lightly flour a smooth surface and roll the dough out to desired size.

(Here is where I did things differently, she recommends using a pizza stone, I don't have one so I used a regular cookie pan and a round pizza pan.)

Luckily for me, my husband spent a lot of time working for a Pizza place, so he knows how to work with pizza dough, and how much sauce, cheese and toppings to use without going overboard. He took over after the dough had been resting for the 15minutes and I just observed.

Once he had the dough stretched out a little he put in on the cookie pan and pizza pan and then continued to squish it until it fit them. Then he did the sauce, cheese and toppings, the boys like ham, pepperoni and pineapple so thats what we use.

These are the pizzas before they went into the oven. They need to bake for 8-12min

The pizzas after they baked. 

They were DELICIOUS! Mater ate 2 and a half slices of pizza and the Rooster had 2 and some of Mater's crusts, which is great because normally they only eat a slice each. I would STRONGLY recommend trying it out if you get a chance, which is why of course I had to share how to make them. Also the crusts are REALLY REALLY good if you dip them in honey, a little trick I learned from eating at Beau Jo's.