I made pizza last night. From scratch. Both dough AND sauce. And I don't have a single damn photo because I was so frazzled by the entire experience. Which is too bad because they looked pretty good.
Little old Italian women don't even make their own pizza from scratch any more. Want to know why? BECAUSE IT TAKES FOREVER. If I'd paid someone a decent hourly wage to make the pizzas (there were three!) I would have shelled out like $80 for three medium cheese pizzas. Three medium, handcrafted, artisanal, mostly locavore cheese pizzas.
Who does this anymore? Stay at home moms who feel like they should have more to show for the day's efforts than one basket of clean laundry, that's who.
You know what the worst part was? Not making the dough, even though I tried being all fancy/old world by creating a well of the dry ingredients and pouring the wet ingredients in and realized too late that the well was too small and tried to make it bigger and watched the yeasty oily water spill all down the sides of the cabinets and splash on my slippers. It wasn't even making the sauce, even though I used the damn tomatoes I froze this summer and they weren't defrosting fast enough and I had to squeeze out the seeds from the half frozen pulp by hand and periodically run warm water over my fingers to thaw them out and THEN cut the tip of my ring finger while dicing the onions. No, the worst part was getting the fully loaded pizzas from the cutting board into the oven. Because we don't have a pizza peel. I'm all for making do, but this was an occasion for specialized equipment, and I DIDN'T HAVE IT.
So we kinda threw the pizzas into the oven onto a cookie sheet (that only has one side and I am only just this second realizing would have made a not-bad substitute for a pizza peel damn it all) and tried to straighten them out in the 500˚ heat. Fun times!
Whatevs. They baked up pretty well, and Sarah declared that I am "the BEST pizza maker in the WORLD!" (Tonight she also stated that Tom and I are the best parents in the world, and that her doll Gloria is the best baby in the world, so, you know, I can't say I place a lot of weight on the claims these days. Still, it was nice to hear.)
So. Lesson? Plan ahead, use the right equipment, and keep an insanely complimentary kid on hand. And never forget the camera.
2 comments:
Hey Tia! Don't give up. It's time to take down corporate pizza.
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/dominos-effect
See you next week!
Kevin O
oh god, pizza is so annoying. I want to go work in papa gino's for a week to learn how to roll out the dough properly.
Pizza peel is totally key. I got one on Amazon (and I've given peel + pizza stone as a gift a few times now. If you have people who are difficult to shop for it's a nice gift.)
my other tip is that I make the dough in my bread machine.
Post a Comment