Canning versus Dehydrating
Hello Friends,
I am curious what y'all do with your food canning versus dehydrating. I personally prefer canning meats and dehydrating most vegetables and fruits. Reason being, dehydrating is easier and gives better texture and versatility for the fruits and vegetables. For example, I use dehydrated vegetables for making homemade pizza every Friday. I have dehydrated mushrooms, peppers and onions that I rehydrate and they are very close to fresh-textured. I can beef, chicken, turkey, pork loin and hamburger. In fact, the only method for dehydrating meats is making jerky and it does not last as long as canning them. I use the canned meats for soups, pot pies, casseroles, tamales and tacos. It's very convenient having the canned meats in the pantry for quick weekday meals because the canning process fully cooks them.
Here's my recipe for Pantry Pizza: It makes 2 each approximately 12" pizzas. Note! I usually weigh my bread ingredients but I will include both weight/volume measurements for y'all ;) Have ready a bowl or 2 qt dough rising bucket to which you have added 1 tablespoon olive oil.
339 grams (2-1/4 cups) fresh ground white wheat flour OR unbleached white flour
1/2 teaspoon ascorbic acid OR 2 teaspoons of dough enhancer IF using fresh ground flour
1-1/2 teaspoons instant yeast (I use SAF Instant - bread machine or rapid-rise will work)
1-1/2 teaspoons sugar Whisk together the flour, instant yeast and sugar AND ascorbic acid OR dough enhancer IF using.
1-1/2 teaspoons salt. Whisk into the flour, yeast and sugar mixture.
237 grams (1 cup) water at room temp.
Add the water and stir well until the dough comes away from the bowl, about a minute. Don't overmix, it should be a very rough wet dough. Overmixing will make it sticky and hard to handle later. Transfer the rough dough to the greased bowl/rising bucket. Turn dough over to grease top, cover and let rise for about 1-1/2 hrs or until doubled in size.
Divide dough in half, round into a ball and let rest for 15 minutes on either olive oil drizzled parchment paper or a 12" pizza pan, cover with plastic wrap. While the dough is resting, rehydrate whatever toppings you are going to use by covering them with warm water and preheat oven and preferably a pizza stone to 475 degrees. GENTLY flatten dough by laying on of hands and deflating and shaping from the center out into approximately a 12" round, building up outer edge as you go. If the dough resists, i.e. as you try to stretch and flatten it out to 12" and it shrinks back instead of readily stretching, cover with plastic wrap and let rest for an additional 5 minutes. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes or until puffy. If using parchment, slip a pizza peel under the crust and slip onto the pizza stone and bake for 6 minutes, snatching out the parchment paper after 4 minutes. If using the pizza pan, use a spatula to remove the crust from the pan and place either on the stone or on the oven rack after 4 minutes of baking. Remove crust to cooling rack and repeat with the other crust. Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees.
Top with your favorite sauce, grated cheese, meat(s), drained rehydrated vegetables and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes until crust is golden and cheese is melted. Remove from oven to cooling rack and brush crust with olive oil. Add freshly grated pepper and parmesan cheese. Let rest for 3 to 5 minutes, slice and serve!
Please share your own preferences/recipes.
