ORIENTAL PIZZA PINWHEELS ON A STICK!

Where does the time go when we have to do something for a particular date? It just flies for me and I'm sure it's the same with you. A Sweet Punch is a baking group that I'm a part of and for this month, we were supposed to bake a pizza.The toppings were left to our choice and if I'm given a choice, I can go really wild thinking about the possibilities which in the end will confused the already confused Gemini. So that happened once again, that morning as I set forth to make the pizza. The dough was made the previous day and was put to rise slowly in the refrigerator.

Now, to the topping. Bacon?Sausage?Veggies?Plain cheese? Ahem! NO way! All the 'Suryanamaskar's ' that I have been doing will go for a toss. Okay, so no cheese. Then what? I didn't want to go with the usual pizza sauce/meat filling topped with cheese kinda pizza, instead wanted something totally totally different. That's when I remembered what I baked for my nephew and niece long time ago...pinwheels on stick!

I had some smoked Italian Sausage with me in the freezer, freezing for the last 6 months. I bought it at our Farmer's Market and they are homemade sausages.Back when we bought that, I had made some filling with it for our Saturday Brunch Sandwich and it was a hit! So I just put 2 and 2 together and made the pizza :)

This dough is a breeze to make, thanks Divya for choosing this recipe.The filling is just a matter of sauteeing some red onions & sausages with soya sauce, salt and pepper.

ORIENTAL PIZZA PINWHEELS

Recipe for pizza dough : Pioneer Woman

Recipe for the filling: My own

Ingredients:

Pizza dough (I halved the recipe and got 15 pinwheels)
1 tsp yeast
4 c all purpose flour/maida
1 tsp salt
1/3 c EVOO (I used canola oil)

Sausage filling:

2 large smoked Italian sausage,chopped up into tiny bits (I used my mezzaluna for this)

Half of a large red onion, sliced fine

1 tbsp ginger garlic paste

3 tbsp soy sauce or to taste ( I always use Dark Soy Sauce)

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Pizza dough:

Dissolve the yeast in 1 1/2 c warm water and set aside for 10 mins till it foams up.

Mix the flour and salt together.Drizzle in  the oil and mix well.
Add in the yeast + water and mix well to form a  ball of dough.

Oil a large bowl and dump the dough into it and rotate to coat the dough with the oil.

Cover it tight with a plastic wrap and let it rise in the refrigerator overnight.

Filling:

Heat oil and saute the onions. When it is soft, add in the ginger garlic paste and saute for another 1 min.

Add in the chopped sausage and mix well. 

Add the soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste. In most cases you will not need the salt. So check and then add.

Switch of the stove & let it cool completely.

Assembly:

Pre-heat the oven to the maximum temperature for 10 mins. Dust your baking sheet /stone with cornmeal/semolina.

On a floured surface, roll out the pizza dough into a rectangle.

Spread the filling over it leaving a 1 " gap from the edges and roll it away from you, starting from the longer side parallel to the edge of the counter top. Seal the edges with water, put the seam -side down and cut into 15 slices.

Place the pinwheels cut-side down and insert skewers into them (parallel to the sheet). 

Bake for 15 mins. You can serve it hot/warm.

Verdict: That evening Jobin came back home hungry and asked me if there was something to eat. I 'offered' him these pinwheels and he just couldn't stop with one,instead he ate around 7 and skipped the dinner! The fillling is really delicious and since there was no cheese involved, it tasted more of a bread roll and less pizza, which is exactly what I wanted.

Living in the US has given me a new insight to cheese, to stay away from it atleast when I cook at home. Where ever you go out to eat, you will be eating some sort of deep-fried food or cheese/butter filled food until you want to live on salad's alone without any dressing. And I'm not a salad person until it's some chicken salad with pasta...I mean that's just an example.

So this one is without cheese, but if you want to add in some cheese, you can sprinkle it on once the pinwheels are cut and placed on the baking sheet and bake till the cheese melts and bubbles (I doubt any cheese that we get in India bubbles, though).

I have made other pizza's before -Cheese &Chilli Chicken Pizza & Tandoori Sausage,Roasted Bell Pepper & Corn Pizza. You can have a look there if you need more ideas for toppings.

With a sprained neck,