Baking, Maybe

This is going to be a busy weekend, so I might not get to either of these, but if I can, I'm going to try to bake two things: first, pizza dough, and second, Ricotta Cheese Cake.

The pizza dough idea comes from having dined at California Pizza Kitchen on our ill-fated shopping trip. I had a pepperoni and pineapple pizza on honey-wheat dough. The dough was quite tasty, so I thought I'd see if I can replicate it. I know, my track record on pizza dough isn't that great -- but keep trying, right? CPK does have a cookbook available, but since I didn't want to pay for that, I am getting it through the library (amazingly enough, the local branch actually has it.) In the meantime, I found this, here --

1 1/2 cups water, warmed to 110° F
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
1 teaspoon sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons whole milk


Lightly coat a large bowl with olive oil and set aside. Combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a small bowl and set aside. Combine flours, cornmeal, and salt and sift together into a large bowl. Add the yeast mixture, honey, and milk and stir until dough begins to form -- it will be slightly sticky. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead until dough is smooth but still tacky -- about 10 minutes. Form the dough into a ball and transfer it to the prepared bowl, turning to coat all sides. Cover with a clean, damp kitchen towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until the dough doubles in volume -- about 90 minutes. Punch the dough down, remove from the bowl, and let dough rest for 5 minutes. Divide the dough in half and turn one piece out onto a lightly floured surface and roll into desired shape and size. Lightly brush the dough's surface with olive oil, top, and bake at 500° F for about 10 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough


As for the cheese cake, it's from that Cooks Illustrated issue I mentioned earlier. It looks to be considerably more effort than my 'normal' cheesecake (I've made, perhaps, three, over the course of years), but -- we'll see. If time permits.....