Pizza - Flatbread + Veggies

This photo is from my wonderful new friend,  Carol Brock McGill.  It's a photo of a pizza from her "Hello Fresh" food subscription.  This is what started me on the path of looking a flatbread pizza recipes.

The Dough

🌿  There are tons of ready made crusts (pizza, flatbread, Naan, cauliflower crust) to buy, but if I want to make my dough in my breadmaker -

Place ingredients in bread machine pan in the following order.

• 1 1⁄8 cups warm water
• 1 ½ Tbl olive oil
• 1 ½ tsp salt 
• 3 1⁄3 cups all purpose flour (OR - Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 gluten-free flour)
• 1 ½ tsp sugar 
• 1 ½ tsp yeast - (I *think* omitting this makes it more of a flatbread)

Bread Machine Settings:

Select -   Pizza Dough

Loaf Size -   n/a

Crust Control -   n/a

Press Start.  It takes 55 minutes

When done, place in a bowl greased with olive oil.  At this point you can cover the bowl and refrigerate for later.  When ready to use, move to lightly floured board and shape the dough.  Note - If you use too much flour, the crust will be tough.

Bake crust for 5 minutes in an oven or air fryer before adding toppings. It should start to crisp, even in just 5 minutes.  

BRUSH with olive oil before adding toppings. This will prevent the crust from getting soggy.

🌿  More crust recipes:

• Debra Klein Vegan Flatbread
• No-Yeast Flatbread by A Virtual Vegan - uses baking soda and powder instead
• Cotter Crunch - Grain Free Naan with Cassava Flour - Uses Bob’s Redmill Cassava Flour.  Many cassava products are naturally vegan as well as nut-, grain-, and gluten-free, making them a great choice for those on an “Healing diet” or with food allergies and sensitivities.
• Focaccia Bread - includes herbs and cheese.  Looks really good and prob easy to modify.

Topping Options

Sauce Base

• Ranch Dressing
• tomato or marinara sauce
• hummus

Veggies

• caramelized red onions 
• garlic
• tomatoes
• sautéed mushrooms
• squash & zucchini
• bell pepper
• kale, spinach or arugula
• Brussels sprouts
• artichokes

More

• nutritional yeast or parmesan
• basil!!!
• Italian seasoning
• thyme
• rosemary
• Crushed red pepper
• glaze - date syrup (very low glycemic), Balsamic glaze, 

Put it Together

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Toast flatbread for 5 minutes.

Sauté the Veggies and put preferred toppings on the flatbread.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Beans - Lima Beans and Pears

This recipe is a good side dish.  It's not something people would rave about, but it's definitely a step above plain lima beans.  I like it.  I like that it's easy.  I like that I can get it cooking early in the day when I have energy.  It can be cooked for 2-12 hours in the oven, depending on the oven temp used, OR it can be cooked in the crock pot, which is how I hope to cook it most often.  It's a keeper.  

Recipe Inspiration Sources:  

• Nora Ephron - She talks about several favorite recipes in her book, Heartburn.  This is one she mentioned she had learned about from Lee Bailey in his book, The Way I Cook.   I had not heard of combining lima beans and pears, but the combination was intriguing.  After trying it, I am totally on board.  
• Food Talk Central - Most of the recipes for limas and pears are cooked stovetop.  However, one HOT summer evening, I was cooking something in the stove and wondered if I the limas could be cooked in the stove as well.  I found this recipe and loosely followed it.  I only made enough for one meal. Voila!  Perfect!  Also, I have a bad habit of letting beans boil over on the stove and make a mess.  Cooking the beans in the oven takes care of that.

"That's the sort of food she liked to serve, something that looked like plain old baked beans and then turned out to have pears up its sleeve." 

Huff Post has a wonderful article on Nora Ephron's favorite recipes.  The photo above came from that article.   But the photo doesn't match the description entirely.  What are the toppers used in this photo?  Bacon bits maybe?  Some tiny bits of orange bell pepper?  

Of course, the lima's and pears are mentioned.  The recipe is a tad different and it even calls for longer cooking -  Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears, peeled and cut into slices, 1/2 cup molasses, 1/2 cup chicken stock, 1/2 onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200 degrees. 

If you're a Nora Ephron fan like me, then you'll enjoy this article, too, where Nora talks about her friendship with Lee Bailey.  Anyway, here's the thing about dinner at Lee Bailey's: it was always more delicious and more fun than dinner at anyone else's house, so much so that I began to make a study of it...

Here's one more article by Nora Ephron published in The New Yorker.  She talks about her cookbook crushes and more.

I miss Nora Ephron.  

Here's the recipe as published by most sources.  This makes a large amount, but can easily be reduced.  

• 3 packages (10-oz.) frozen lima beans
• 2 large ripe pears, cored, peeled, and sliced crosswise
• 1 cup vegetable broth (Nora used chicken broth)
• ¼ cup brown sugar*
• ¼ cup chopped onion
• ¼ cup light molasses*
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper

* The first time I made it, I didn't use molasses or brown sugar and it was fine.  

The recipe calls for cooking this (in a heavy 2-quart casserole) in the oven for 8 hours at 200 degrees!!!  

I was cooking something else at 400, so I just went with that and cooked the beans for 30 or 40 minutes.  One source recommended cooking for 2 hours at 250 degrees.  

✅  I'm thinking this would be a great thing to cook in the crockpot in the future, especially in the summer when the last thing you want to do is keep an oven on all day!!!