On Wednesday night our veggie box arrived with 6-8 small yellow squash and zucchinis. That motivated Stephanie to want to make a pizza, so she set to work on a homemade dough while I went to the store and bought 4 thick slices of black forest ham to brown for a topping. We broiled slices of the squash and zucchini with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and then assembled it all on the par-baked crust, topping it off with a healthy layer of shredded emmental (because that’s what they put on pizza in France—and it’s fun to be different). When the pizza came out of the oven, we added a fresh egg yolk to each half, which melted all over everything. It was…amazing.

But we only used half of the dough, so I decided to throw the other half on our hot pizza stone at 450°F to see what would happen. Sure enough it turned into bread. A small, beautiful, experimental boule. It was a dense bread, we hadn’t properly kneaded or proofed it, but it was still bread. Toasted with a spread of cultured butter and a sprinkle of sea salt, it was delectable.

Come Saturday, we still had a little less than half of the loaf left, and surprisingly it hadn’t turned rock hard yet, so we decided to make BLTs for breakfast—since the eggs had disappeared into the pizza earlier that week. I fried up some local bacon from Marin Sun Farms via the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market, added some 4 year aged vintage cheddar from Pt. Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company, and then topped it all off with some sliced heirloom tomatoes and lettuce, both from our veggie box. It sounds like we planned it, but it was completely impromptu—we were just using the things we had on hand.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a baker, but the idea of making a loaf of bread on the weekend for the following week is very appealing. So tonight I used one of the sample baggies of locally-milled whole wheat flour in a bread dough “recipe” from Michael Ruhlman’s latest cookbook, Ratio. I’m going to let it continue fermenting overnight in the fridge, and then tomorrow I’ll bake it on the pizza stone.