Monday dinner: pizza party

So last night we had the pizza. I asked B if he'd like to write it up as a guest post, since he made it, but he was suddenly and unavoidably attacked by a flock of marauding pterodactyls, and decided not to. (Don't worry. He's fine. Just a flesh wound.)

Our pizza dough recipe is pretty basic, but it seems to work. I reproduce it here as I wrote it up for the cookbook I made for our own use back before I had children, when apparently I had nothing better to do than write my own cookbook:

Makes two medium pizzas:

2 cups flour
1 envelope yeast, either fast-acting or regular is fine (contains 1/4 ounce, 7 grams, or almost a tablespoonful)
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
As much tepid water as it takes to make a soft dough, with a shot of olive oil mixed in - say about 2/3 of a cup in all.

1. Mix the dry ingredients together and gingerly add the water and oil until it's a good consistency.
2. Knead like a maniac for ten minutes.*
3. Leave it in the bowl, covered with a damp teatowel or cling wrap or a plate, in a warmish place for as long as you can - at least an hour. It should double in size.
4. Knock the dough back (i.e. knead it pushing all the air out) and divide in half. You can freeze one half at this stage if you're not making two pizzas tonight. Leave the other half, or the whole lot, to grow some more - at least 20 minutes, but another hour would be fine.
5. Shape and top as desired.

*Here I will note that B likes to demonstrate his upper-body strength and exorcise his stress demons by kneading it by hand. When I make it, I like to demonstrate my mastery of kitchen appliances and my multitasking skills by using the wonderful doughhook on my wonderful stand mixer. Either approach is perfectly fine, but you don't need to let it go for ten minutes if you use the machine.

Ball of dough, defrosted

Usually, pizza is a weekend thing for us, but because I'd already bought the mozzarella, we made it on Monday. I had taken a ball of dough out of the freezer the night before, and out of the fridge at about 3pm, though sooner would have been better in hindsight. When B got home at 5.30, all he had to do was stretch it out a bit - he likes to use the rolling pin, though when I made pizza the previous week I went all artisan and just worked it and flapped it around with my hands instead.

Rollin', rollin', rollin' ...

We used pizza sauce from a jar this time, though often I just take some tinned crushed tomatoes and stir in a heaped teaspoon of pesto. Toppings were some caramelized onion that was sitting around in the fridge just waiting for a good use, fresh red pepper, and sliced ham. And the secret to most delicious homemade pizza, acquired from our friend Mark, is to splash out and use fresh mozzarella. B chops his into little cubes for better coverage - I like the look of large thin discs when I make it.

Observe: jar of sauce; cubes of mozz

That thing it's sitting on is a pizza peel. If you make your own pizza dough, which is a lot thinner and floppier than a pizza base you might buy ready made, you need something like this to slide it into the oven without making a huge mess and some very disappointed diners. If you sprinkle a little cornmeal on the peel before putting the dough onto it, it acts like tiny ball bearings and slides the whole thing beautifully into the oven and onto your pizza stone.

Sorry about the blinding lights

If you don't have a stone, you can use a baking tray / cookie sheet, but the stone works better. Just don't try to put it directly on the rack as if it's a frozen pizza. Our pizza stone lives on the floor of the oven when not in use, and if you can remember to put it up on a rack before you turn on the oven, that's a good thing. Set the oven to 450 F or as high as you can, for best results. It will be done in less than ten minutes, so don't go anywhere - just wait till the cheese is bubbling.

Best results, right here

One eager diner. The segment - if you can call it that with such an irregular (I mean, handcrafted) shape - with no toppings is for her. The yummier remainder was for us. Dash often partakes of the crust, so long as it's been carefully picked clean of all alien substances, but last night he decided not to.

All the more for us, we said.