Peet Zuh
Despite my exhaustion, I’m determined to make pizza tonight.
With two of my favorite foods, pineapple and jalapeños. Which also happen to be some of my favorite pizza toppings. Oh, and sausage. And cheese. And arugula.
If only it were fig season. Swoon.
Instead I’m left to my own devices. Including a dough hook, a thermometer, and pure determination.
Except really only the first two.
Wow I’m so tired.
Homemade Pizza (for two)
MATERIALS:
Dough
½ package of yeast (Active Dry. Not Fast-acting. It ain’t gangsta, it just frontin’)
½ cup water
Awks. The moment that you realize that you put in too much sugar into the first batch. There goes halving the recipe.
Homemade Pizza (not actually for two because I suck at dividing by 2)
MATERIALS:
Dough
1 cup water (if you have a thermometer, it should be about 95-100˚F. If you don’t…. you should be lukewarmish; you don’t want to kill your yeast. And if you DO kill your yeast, then dear god do not proceed with your recipe. Stop, and do it again. The worst case scenario is when you keep going with those cinnamon buns because you’re so stubborn and then they come out like rocks and you’re embarrassed when people smile pityingly and are like ‘at least the flavors are right…ish’. Not like that’s ever happened of course.)
1 tsp sugar
1 package of yeast (roooooooom temperature plznthx)
2 tbs olive oil (and extra to coat your proofing bowl)
1 tbs salt
2&½ to 3 cups all-purpose flour (that you spooned into the measuring cups; recently I did some reading about proper measuring methods and it turns out the way to accurately gauge flour volume without packing too tightly is to spoon the flour from the bag into the measuring cup and then of course level off with the straight edge of a knife. And not tapping it on the counter beforehand (or some such tomfoolery).
Sauce (a la Mommy)
…..actually, anything 'a la Mommy’ really has no recipe or measurement attached to it. But let’s just pretend that I made the super basic, epically delicious sauce with just
tomatoes
oil
salt
pepper
with maybe some garlic, basil and oregano.
anyways.
warning: this will take at least two hours. do not proceed unless you have steel willpower to not eat all of the pizza toppings because the pizza is taking too darned long and who has time to make homemade dough anyways.
1. Measure your water into a liquid measure and if it’s too hot (if you just heated it with a kettle or something) then check the temp and add an icecube to cool it until it’s about 105˚F.
2. Add in the sugar and stir until dissolved.
Sidenote: sugar makes yeast happy. It eats. It farts and burps in gluttony. You can practically hear the little guys being like “ahhhhh that was sooooo satisfyi-*BELCHHHHH*”
3. NOW your water should be ready. Pour in your packet of yeast and stir gently until it dissolves into a tan, creamy liquid. Let the yeasties sit for 5-10 minutes until the brainless gourmands seem to have let all of their gas out.
4. Pour in the olive oil and salt, and stir around in the mixer (probably should start with the paddle attachment on LOW-SLOW speed. You can switch to the dough hook on low-slow speed next).
5. Start gradually adding in the flour to the mixer bowl. Switch from the paddle to the dough hook after adding about ½ to 1 cup of the flour.
6. When it’s all beautiful and ball-like (more accurately, when it’s not crumbly when you pinch the dough but also not too sticky) and you can pick it up in your hands, it’s probably time. Plus, you wouldn’t want to overmix or add too much flour. Just knead a couple or a few times just to make sure everything’s been mixed properly and the texture feels right. [Practice makes perfect]
7. Lightly oil your proofing bowl, and after balling up your dough, LIGHTLY coat the ball in the oil. Cover bowl with a moist paper towel or regular cloth and let sit in a warmish area. Like your stove-top on a burner that isn’t on but near enough to burners that are that it’s warmish feeling. Let sit for an hour.
I made mine more like a semi-flattened ball-ish thing…. the shape doesn’t matter too much
8. After the dough has doubled in size (hopefully this will have happened in that hour you waited so patiently), preheat your oven to 500˚F with your hypothetical pizza stone inside on the middle rack, split your 1 ball of dough into 3 smaller balls of dough, and knead once or twice before letting sit for another 10 minutes to relax (who knows why recipes always say this. As if the dough has had a long day at work and needs to chill out because it’s too high stressed. You know who’s too high stressed? ME. FROM WAITING FOR THIS FREAKING HIGH STRESSED DOUGH TO UN-STRESS ITSELF. JUST CALM THE F DOWN ALREADY).
9. After you’ve calmed yourself down a bit as well by snacking on intermediate mozzarella balls, your dough will probably have done the same (except for the mozzarella balls part). Take a ball of dough and, on an extremely well-floured wooden cutting board (okay, seriously, don’t put too much flour so that your dough is sitting on a flour beach. But definitely enough so that your dough will not stick to the surface), shape your dough into 1/8 inch thick circle or lung or whatever-shape-you-want. Don’t make your crust too wide nor too thick! You’ll regret it later, wishing you’d just extended the best part (aka any part with toppings on it).
10. TOP. You can put whatever you want. You can also get overzealous and make two different kinds of pizza on your one pizza and put on sauce and mushrooms and basil and tomato and mozzarella and pineapple and jalapeño and hot sausage and roasted garlic and arugula and garlic-infused olive oil.
But of course I can control myself.
Whoops.
Definitely cannot control myself.
Also:
Mom’s looked so much prettier than mine….
Whatever, Mom.
But after a flailed attempt and getting my pizza to not fold in on itself, bringing me to Step…
…11. Using two sets of (preferably human) hands, have one person hold the cutting board nearish to the pizza stone, while the other (equipped with one or two pancake spatulas) gets the spatulas under the pizza and slides it onto the stone.
It’s probably the hardest part (aside from the patience) of this whole endeavor. But once it’s in there it’s just
12. Some random amount of minutes later (depending on your pizza….maybe 10-15? I should have been counting), your crust will brown and your pizza will look like pizza. And that is when your mental timer should be ringing and you extract your pizza with extreme finesse (use a metal pancake spatula here because it’ll just be so much easier to shift your stubborn pie off of the stone) onto a plate or cutting board or whathaveyou.
And VOILA.
Success! Albeit a messy one. And a poorly photographed one.
But super mc-nom. So donmattah.