Why You Should Cook Pizza with a Pizza Stone

Pizza is one of those delicious foods we all enjoy having. The unique thing about pizza is how flexible the dish can be. With a large variety of toppings, cheeses, sauces, and crusts it is easy to see why we all love pizza. Even people who are concerned with their health enjoy an occasional pizza. Yet, these health-conscious people know great pizza is hard to find.

A Better, Thinner Crust

Health focused people know that thin crust pizza decreases calories, while enhancing the flavor.  Most metal pans make baking a thin crust pizza difficult. Metal pans tear crust, which can lead to cheese and toppings dripping out. Once toppings start to drip out into the oven, smoke and fire alarms start being set off. One secret to making a fantastic thin crust pizza is to have a pizza stone.  Pizza stones help make a thin crust pizza extra crispy while leaving the toppings intact. Furthermore, a seasoned pizza stone can provide some of that authentic wood-fired oven taste.

Easier to Clean Than Metal Pans

Cooking pizza with metal pans has another drawback. After cooking a pizza, people may realize the truth behind these metal sheets. Cheese, and other ingredients, could have dripped onto the metal sheets and fused. The only option at this point is soaking and scrubbing with hot water. In some cases, even a lot of soaking and scrubbing doesn’t clean up the metal sheet. With a pizza stone, these problems disappear. All one needs to do is a quick brushing away of the crumbs when using a pizza stone.

A Versatile Cooking Tool

These pizza stones aren’t only for pizza.  A person can use them to cook many different types of oven based food. Items such as french fries, chicken nuggets, or anything that a person wants nice and crispy.  These pizza stones even work fantastic on delivery pizza. If delivery pizza is too under-cooked, or just needs a few extra toppings, a pizza stone can be ideal. If food needs warming up, without getting soggy, pizza stones are a perfect option. Pizza stones are great for any item that needs a quick trip through the oven, without the lengthy cleanup afterward.

Which Type of Pizza Stone Should You Buy?

 

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The Basics of Making Soup from Scratch

Now that the weather is chilly outside, there is nothing better than eating a nice, hearty bowl of soup. It’s easy to buy a can of soup and heat it up in microwave, but homemade soup tastes so much better. If you’re not sure whether you’re up for the task of making soup from scratch, then you should think again. As long as you follow these easy steps, you can cook easily cook soups from scratch:

Choose your main flavor – fat

Although most flavor in soups and stews comes from fat, you can choose a healthy fat like olive or coconut oil. You can saute your various vegetables in the oil prior to adding to the other ingredients, for maximum flavor.

Choose your base

Choosing the base for your soup is easy, and you can opt for cream, tomato or chicken/beef stock-based. You can use whatever you have available, or if you have more than one type of base available, then choose the one that seems as if it will be most flavorful.

Veggies galore

Even if you aren’t a big vegetable fan, you will want to put various vegetables in your soup in order to flavor it. Onions, celery, and green peppers are very popular, but the sky is the limit when it comes to using vegetables in soups.

Meat, beans, or both

If your meat will include meat, then you will need to choose the type. You can opt for chicken, fish, turkey or even beef. Yet just like the vegetables that you choose, you also have free reign over the meat that you choose. If you want a vegetarian soup, then you might want to add beans, peas, or even some type of pasta.

Spices are seasonings

The seasonings that you choose are important, too, whether you choose saffron, black pepper, cayenne, seasoning salt or garlic powder, or all of them, you soup is likely to taste delicious.

Simply Put:

1. Saute your vegetables in the oil of your choice.
2. Boil vegetable or meat stock in a large pot, add the vegetables.
3. Put all the other ingredients into the pot. Let simmer for hours, to lock in flavor, and then enjoy.

Raise The Bar With These Coffee Tips!

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, rivaling tea as the morning beverage of choice for millions of people. Whether the preference is organic shade-grown specialty blends or the average ground beans in a can, there is no doubt that true coffee lovers will go to great lengths to get their “fix.” Read on for some interesting tips and insights about this passion-inducing liquid that we can’t seem to live without.

If you are a heavy coffee drinker make lunch you last cup. Drinking caffeine in the afternoon and evening can seriously effect your ability to sleep soundly. As long as you don’t load your coffee up with too many calories it is just fine to have several cups during the morning hours.

If you want to get the most coffee for the least amount of price, clip coupons. Coffee is nothing special when it comes to this. Clipping the right coupons and saving them for double coupon days can really add up the savings, for both coffee and related commodities like creamer.

Coffee tastes much better if it is fresh brewed, and is actually lower in caffeine if consumed soon after it is made. Some people are particular about using only spring water or bottled water to make it, while others seem to think tap water works just fine for making good coffee.

The human body needs at least four hours to eliminate caffeine. You should keep this in mind if you want to drink a cup of coffee before going to bed. It is best to drink a decaffeinated beverage if you need to go to sleep within the next few hours.

As you see, coffee is indeed an important element in the world’s daily dietary consumption. Use some of the insights here to enrich the experience of your morning cup of “joe” and to expand your knowledge and enjoyment of a product that employs millions of workers across the globe.

Kosher Comfort Food Recipes To Make For Summer

Many of the Universities and other schools around the country have gone out for summer, and the days are slowly growing warmer. It is around this time of year that we get most excited for cooking delicious home comfort foods. Whether you are having fun outside, or holed-up inside watching movies, we have found the best destination for Kosher comfort food recipes at the Weiser Kitchen:

These Kosher Recipes Include:

• Dairy-Free Recipes
• Gluten-Free Recipes
• Tree Nut-Free Recipes
• Kid-Friendly Recipes
•  Vegetarian Recipes
• Vegan Recipes

Get All of Our Favorite Recipes From the Weiser Kitchen:

 

Italian Home Kitchen Blog’s yummy Food Photo Gallery

We love our food, we can’t get enough of it. Hours upon hours are spent each day looking at food photos… Yeah, we might have a problem, but we are sharing that problem with all of our readers. Enjoy our favorite food photos of 2013:

 

Favorite Food Photos of 2013
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Single Serving Soups With Broiled Cheese Crust

Soups are tasty, refreshing, and comforting. Soups are both a snack, and a drink, while remaining a meal. It is safe to say that we all love soup, but sometimes we find ourselves thinking that we can’t have a soup too often, because it is a lot of work. While it is true that making large batches of soup can take quite a while, there are plenty of options in your supermarket that make fixing soup more regularly easier.

Most chain-supermarkets these days offer single serving soups (about a quart) and even larger containers for couples or for families. These soups have been cooked, properly cooled, and can be reheated again quickly without losing flavor or quality. These are not the salty cans of soup that you make be familiar with in the soup aisle, these are gourmet soups.

These gourmet soups can either be simply reheated and eaten, a cooking process that takes about 1.5 – 2 minutes, or you can take it up another level. You have already saved so much time, what is another minute and a half? Put a golden cheesy crust on top of that soup.

The process of broiling a cheese crust is actually super-easy. Here is how you can do it:

Sliced Muenster Cheese

We had a Beefy French Onion Soup that we actually purchased from the supermarket fresh-made and still hot. It needed to be heated up a bit, then we poured the soup into a large coffee mug, and placed the sliced cheese across the top. You want to have the edges hanging over the cup, and you can use several slices for extra cheesiness.

Next comes the broiling, a part that tends to make some people a bit nervous, but it is very simple.

Simply turn your oven setting to broil and leave the door of the oven cracked open. You will see that the top coil of the oven gets super-hot. Simply place the cup on the center rack — the cheese will be fairly close to the super-hot coils.

— IMPORTANT —

Make sure that you are constantly watching the cooking process with the oven door open.
The process will go quite quickly — in seconds — so keep an eye on it.

You will see that the cheese will rapidly brown and bubble — like a pizza. Let it keep browning as much as you like.

And it is that simple!

Try it for yourself.

Cooking Classy With A Sprinkle Of Fancy

One of life’s delights is food. Man’s basic need is both a necessity and an enjoyment. Cooking Classy with a sprinkle of fancy proves the point that the preparation of nourishment can also be a fun and healthy experience.

Cooking is the method, talent, skill and ability to create and arrange food for eating. This process is done with the use of heat or cold. There are also edible substances that do not require the use fire, chilling nor freezing. Some food substances are taken in fresh or uncooked. There are various techniques in cooking. The ways to cook with heat are grilling, roasting, baking, smoking, boiling and frying. Some dishes are best served chilled, frozen or raw.

The style applied is dependent on the ingredients used and on the individual performing the task. If one is gifted with the culinary skills, he can easily turn a simple recipe to a unique and mouth-watering dish. The talent of altering the usual recipes and adding zest to the overall flavor can bring food to a higher level of taste.

One does not need to worry if he is not gifted with culinary adeptness. He can always make use of instructional materials on food preparation. Through these, one is guided and given the details on the ingredients and procedures required by the project.

There are a lot of sites found in the World Wide Web that provide all sorts of ways to create food dishes. One can simply browse through these sites and choose which one he wants to execute. These web pages present and provide diverse styles and manners in the presentation of edible substances.

Those with the passion for cooking are able to use and combine a variety of ingredients to upgrade the flavor, nutritional value and visual appeal of a lot of dishes. Adding a more elaborate and decorative design on an edible item can be an exciting and pleasurable sight to those who are to partake of it. Food preparation is an art that is completed with the application of colors and ornaments without sacrificing flavor and nutrition.

Artisinal Cheesemaker Returns to Oregon Town

We love hearing any stories that involve the passing on of a craft, mom and pop stores, fresh ingredients, and handmade goods. This article has all of those elements rolled up into one and tells a nice little story of a cheese maker in Branden, Oregon. Nice to see urban renewal meshing so well with traditional food-making techniques.

Read the entire article “Face Rock Creamery Breaks Ground”