Overcoming My Fear of Yeast

I love to read through recipes and start planning dinners around them- however, more often than not, when I’m scanning down the ingredients list and see the word “yeast”, I turn the page. Dealbreaker. I don’t do yeast. At least I didn’t, but yesterday that all changed and I couldn’t be happier.

The recipe to change my mind was none other than pizza dough. Basic, simple pizza dough. That’s what Deb told me, and though I feared that it couldn’t possibly work, I believed her (having already made her delicious pumpkin butter didn’t hurt in helping to instill a little trust).

All that was asked of me was to mix together flour, yeast (I used instant because my store was out of active dry somehow) salt, water and olive oil. Knead, form into a ball and place it in a greased bowl covered with plastic wrap. Let it rise for 1-2 hours somewhere warm- I preheated my oven at 200 for a few minutes, shut it off, and then stowed my growing dough in there. Push the air out of it. Let it rest another 20 minutes under the plastic wrap again, then take it out and roll in into desired shape (in my case, a deformed circular rectangle, in Deb’s case a perfect circle). Top it with whatever your heart desires and bake it quickly in a scorching hot oven. Enter pizza nirvana. Check!

I made mine buffalo chicken style, by mixing some sliced precooked chicken cubes with 1/2 cup tomato sauce and 1-2 tbsp buffalo chicken sauce. I also used mozzarella cheese and sliced green onions, but was really wishing I had blue cheese on hand to make this truly perfect.

Ta da! You can bet I was incredibly proud of my pizza. You can also bet that I will be making this again. Now that I’ve conquered my fear of yeast, I can’t wait to move onto more ambitious dishes (bread, or cinnamon rolls perhaps?).

The pizza dough recipe can be found here, and really now that I’ve done it you have no excuse not to try it. No one should be scared of yeast 🙂