A Day of Solar Baking

The Sun Oven was very busy today. I made two pizzas, a focaccia and a pumpkin cake. To make my part of the job easy I used purchased pizza dough and a cake mix from Canterbury Naturals.  I couldn't decide if I wanted tomatoes or eggplant on the focaccia so I did both. A drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt, pop it in the pre-heated Sun Oven and you're done. It was a beautiful sunny day and keeping the temperature at 350º was a cinch.
Tomorrow we're taking the Sun Oven on a camping trip. I won't be able to update my blog until we get back but I promise to take pictures.

Sun Pizza

It's been a week of extreme ups and downs for me. On Tuesday I made my first ever t.v. appearance, on Wednesday my favorite cat died. On Thursday and Saturday I attended two Sun Oven demos held by Paul Munsen of Sun Ovens Int. Today all I wanted to do was kick back and eat something fun.

Many food critics, professional and non, will tell you that one of the best pizza places in the U.S. is Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. I've been there once and their pizza is divine, but it comes with more than one catch and I'm not talking about price. It's only open for dinner, closed Sundays and the wait is at least three and a half hours. People line up before it opens to get their name on the list. Not exactly my idea of a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

The last time I made pizza in the solar oven I was disappointed with the result. The crust was soggy and the cheese overcooked. I figured adding the toppings after letting the dough bake until almost done would yield better results. After all, the tomato sauce is already cooked, it only needs to heat up and the cheese only needs to melt. I used purchased dough from Fresh and Easy. The package says it makes one twelve inch pizza but I like a thinner crust. I get two pizzas from one package. I baked the base for about twenty minutes before putting the toppings on it. Then I let it bake about ten more minutes until the cheese had melted. The red pizza is topped tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, olives and basil. The white pizza has goat cheese, mozzarella cheese, olive oil and pepper on it.

Solar baked pizza is not something you can just put in the oven and forget about, but it is easy and fun to make. Pre-baking the crust made all the difference. It was much better this time. And it's a whole lot more relaxing than standing around in the 105º Phoenix heat waiting for a table at Pizzeria Bianco.

Sun Oven Pizza

Today's lunch. Sun Oven Pizza. It was o.k. but next time I will let the crust bake a little before adding any of the toppings. I'm starting to get a little worried that the unintended consequences of this solar cooking blog will be weight gain. It's been what? One week? In the fridge I have leftover shepherd's pie and a bowl of hummus. Today's pizza has already put me over my calorie allowance for the day. Maybe I should let the neighbors in on my little project so I can use them as guinea pigs. Here's an idea. I could put the sun oven in the driveway next time. Surely people would stop to ask about it. Not that there are that many people walking around when it's 110º.