Count Down To Passover — Pizza

This is a very hectic time of year. 

We are preparing for Passover. 

This means that everything in the house, in particular in the kitchen and eating areas are cleaned and checked for leavened products, which are called “chametz.”

It is a lot of work. Fortunately, Raizel is home from school this week. She has been an amazing helper! I don’t know what we would have done without her!

In this state of in between, everything in the kitchen is more scattered than usual. My husband and Raizel have begun to clear out some of the cabinets for our Passover products. Hence, it might be difficult for me to do too much posting for the next week or so.

As I was clearing out my freezer, I found some frozen pizza dough that I wanted to use. 

However, making pizza at home is a bit complicated for me.

As observant Jews, we follow the Jewish dietary laws of keeping kosher.

For those who may not be familiar, in a kosher kitchen, milk and meat dishes are cooked and prepared separately. There is also a third food category, parve, which means neither meat nor dairy.

This means that we have separate meat and milk cooking utensils, and we do not cook milk and meat in the oven at the same time, nor eat meat and milk together at the same time.

I thought it might be helpful to include these 2 pictures that I found on line about how to keep kosher:

This picture gives you an idea of the ins and outs of having a kosher kitchen.

Some readers of this blog may have observed that I do not post recipes with dairy products. I rarely cook with dairy. I really only have about 2 dairy pots and only the barest of essential utensils for dairy food.

In order to not cook milk and meat in the same oven together, many people have 2 ovens. It is possible to manage with only one oven, but it takes a bit more planning. 

I am fortunate to have 2 separate ovens: one is for meat and the other is parve. But, I do not have an oven for dairy.

So, any dairy that we eat is usually cooked in the microwave. 

All of this is to explain why making this pizza was an accomplishment for me. Creating this pizza took a little bit of unconventional ingenuity.

I am very excited that I was able to come up with a way to make it!

Ingredients

1 lbs. pizza dough

Olive oil

Salt Spice Blend. Most of my spices have been put away for Passover 

Tomato sauce

Grated cheese

Instructions

Focaccia:

Roll dough onto pan to desired thickness. Add olive oil and sprinkle spices on top.

Bake in 450* oven until lightly browned.

Next step:

Add tomato sauce over prepared pizza dough and then add grated cheese. Microwave for 2 minutes.

Here are the pictures:

Pizza dough ready to shape

Pizza dough rolled out and on baking sheet

Olive oil and spices on top

Cooked pizza dough. Love the color!

Cooked pizza dough with sauce and cheese.

Voila! The final product!

 

Voila! Nice fresh hot pizza!

The girls loved it, with the cheese and without the cheese. It is a good thing that I took pictures, because there is nothing left!

References:

https://makoletonline.wordpress.com/

http://bgsujournalism.com/j4200/being-orthodox-not-kosher-in-bowling-green/

Kashrut observance from Martin Brown