King Arthur Perfect Pizza Flour Blend, Pizza Dough Flavor and Pizza Seasoning

As a result of my mom being awesome, I received King Arthur pizza dough flavor, pizza seasoning and perfect pizza flour blend for my birthday. As a result of me being a huge nerd, this was basically the best birthday present ever. Except for my pink and purple Huffy bike (1985). But this was definitely up there for this millennium.

First, let me say that you should all really be buying your flour exclusively from North Dakota Mill in Grand Forks, N.D., the largest flour mill in the U.S. and the only state-owned milling facility.   We all know good bread/pizza crust starts with good flour, right? Right. And we all know good everything starts with North Dakota, right? Right.  However, if you really must buy your flour from outside America's heartland, King Arthur (based in Vermont) is a good choice and their website is helpful if you run into trubs with almost any kind of baking experiment.

King Arthur Perfect Pizza Flour Blend

According to the package, this is basically a mix of all purpose flour and durum flour with some baking soda. Or is it baking powder? No, soda.  I did a very unscientific experiment which kind of didn't really make sense since the King Arthur blend has additional leavening agents in it by making the recipe on the back of the package with Perfect Pizza Blend flour and Arrowhead Mills unbleached all purpose flour.  Let's just say if making pizza dough were a jousting tournament, King Arthur totally knocked the other guy off the horse and then had his horse step on the other guy's face. Compared to many other pizza doughs I've tried, the dough was very easy to work with, did not tear or roll back and was easy to toss and shape.  The outcome was also impressive, resulting in a crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside middle thickness American-style crust. If you are not that into screwing around with a bunch of different flours and types of crust and other complicated baking things, this flour is for you. If you are into that sort of thing, I would still keep some of this around on stand-by for those days when you accidentally make dough that has the consistency of lumpy, half-dried out (you know when it gets crusty edges?) Play Doh.

King Arthur Pizza Dough Flavor

Anything that makes something else taste more like garlic and/or cheese is a no brainer. I whole-heartedly endorse this product.

King Arthur Pizza Seasoning

There are a million pizza seasonings out there, but I like this one because it smells fresh and is less heavy on the oregano flavor.  This is good to keep on hand to season the Frisco Madness no-work pizza sauce recipe described here (i.e., if you just use smushed canned tomatoes as pizza sauce). I would caution, however, that there is some salt in it, and if you're not sure how salty your canned tomatoes are, you should taste them before seasoning to make sure you're not turning your pizza into a salt lick. This is likely only a problem for you if you live in Hong Kong and can't buy San Marzano tomatoes, which you all know you should be using on your pizza if you can get them, correct?

King Arthur pizza-related baking products: buy them!

Equipment Review - Star Trek Enterprise Pizza Cutter

Christmas can be a stressful time of year, especially if you wait until last the last minute to buy your gifts. Therefore, while most normal northern hemisphere humans are just starting to get excited about spring showers, May flowers, picnics, baseball games, etc., I'm starting my Christmas 2011 equipment reviews so you can get a head start on filling up your gift closets for those lucky pizza lovers on your Christmas list.  Or for those lucky pizza lovers who, for example, have a birthday on April 28.  

First up, the Star Trek Enterprise Pizza Cutter, available at ThinkGeek for $24.99.  I gave this to my dad last year on star date 2010.25.12 and it was a smash hit.  He didn't use it for two weeks because he was considering whether to display it on his desk or use it to cut pizza.  That's certainly a tough one, dad!

Below, getting ready for its maiden voyage through the Heggie's Pizza quadrant.

But enough intro, here is my one sentence review:  It looks sweet, it certainly cuts through pizza just as well as a standard pizza cutter, and it will have the recipient boldly ordering pizza on occasions where no man has ordered pizza before.  Do it.