Corned beef and sauerkraut – PERFECT for pizza!
No, really!
I got the idea for trying this with the leftover reuben dip from The Silo in Lake Forest, who make my favorite Reuben Pizza – if I can only get them to pie cut it – a thin crust topped with corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese and thousand island dressing. I think they may add a bit of parmesan in there as well; MY is it tasty.
The reuben dip made for a nice, if kind of thick, topping, but next time I make this, I think I’ll go with the basics – fresh corned beef from the deli, well-drained sauerkraut, the dressing and some nice shredded gruyère or swiss cheese. I also think that this would be killer on the grill, but we had winds gusting above 60mph on the deck, so I went with our oven and the pizza stone and it was still very nice.
First, let’s make our dough:
The bread machine makes quick work (well, about an hour) of tossing this together, and the recipe our friend Don shared can easily be cut in half. If you’re particularly detail oriented, you may recall that when I last posted about this dough, our bread machine didn’t seem to play well with the recipe cut in half and I had to cycle it through twice. Hmmm. Must have been some sort of atmospheric disturbance (COULDN’T be user error!) – because it worked a treat on the first try this time.
INGREDIENTS (again, I cut these in half for just us)
Dough:
•2 cup water
•2 tbsp olive oil
•2 tbsp sugar
•2 tsp salt
•5 cups flour
•2 tsp yeast
Toppings:
•Deli-sliced corned beef – about 8 ounces
•Well-drained sauerkraut (I used a 14-oz. can of Frank’s Quality Kraut)
•Shredded Swiss cheese – about a cup
•Thousand Island salad dressing – OR – you could use creamy Russian, which in some places is more traditional
Combine the dough ingredients in bread machine in the order specified (ours is WET, DRY, YEAST) and cycle on ‘pizza dough’.
Once the dough is ready, divide in two (if you make the full batch) and roll out on a lightly oiled baking sheet (Don calls for rolling out on a floured surface – but using the baking sheet worked really well for me). Sprinkle with corn meal, flip and sprinkle the bare top with corn meal. If you’ve made the full-sized batch, repeat with second half of dough.
If you need to, you can let the dough sit like this, really, REALLY well covered with plastic wrap, for a while.
Place pizza stone on your gas grill or in the oven and preheat for five to ten minutes – to about 375º to 400º.
Sprinkle the stone with a little cornmeal or flour and place dough on the stone.
Close the grill and cook the dough five to ten minutes, then flip and cook an additional five to ten minutes.
NOW you can add your toppings.
Spread the pre-baked dough with the sauerkraut and top with the corned beef. Drizzle on the dressing – not TOO much, eyeball it – and top with the cheese.
Return the ‘za to the oven and bake for another ten to fifteen minutes. Remove from oven, let rest for five minutes, PIE CUT, and enjoy.
You can certainly mix this up if you like – try spreading the dressing on the dough and then top with the sauerkraut and corned beef; or you could add sliced black olives – YUM – or maybe use sliced turkey instead of the corned beef – thus making it a Rachel ‘Za Project (it really pains me that I know this is a pun).