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Current mood:  hungry
I once wrote a tune called Pizza in the Morning for no other reason than the fresh pizza cooling down in my kitchen. The tune was finished in about ten minutes, the definition of inspiration.
Pizza is almost a religion to me. In the mid 90's, I bribed a pizza place in Seattle's U-District for some "advice" on how to make good pizza sauce, and it still took a few years to come out right. The crust was another beast altogether but it too finally came together.
I'm not sure what it is, why I became such a pizza loving fool, but it's turned me into a fanatic. I love experimenting with pizza dough and new sauces as much as I love a good powder day or a sweaty night. The ultimate would be a great powder day, a great pizza, and then a sweaty night as the dessert of the day.
I'm not a pizza snob, I just like the way my pizza comes out more than most pizza places. Here in Bellingham, the North Fork makes pretty good pizza as does La Fiama. La Fiama has some very strange pizzas, though. I prefer to keep it simple with their Sophia or Margarita.
More than a few of my friends have wondered, or bothered, or cajoled and pressed me as to why I don't open up a pizza place of my own. I ask them to think about making a pizza place of their own and usually that stops the conversation pretty quick.
Pizza parties are one of my favorite things to do. I've done it for friend's birthdays, I've done it for no reason at all, and I often do it when I'm having a jam session.
Pizza jams are a good time. Play some music, take a break make some pizza, play some more music, make some more pizza, and not always in that order. Sometimes I get a crust ready and people who brought their own toppings or have some ideas about great pizza will whip up their own masterpieces that sometimes even taste good.
When making a pizza, my idea of a good pizza comes from the less is more school of thought.
I don't want to pile the toppings on so high that you can't taste the crust or the sauce, two thirds of what make a good pizza good. I'm more likely to go sparse on the toppings, a few pieces of tomato here and there, a bit of meat if people want it, paper thin onions lightly sprinkled, just enough stuff to get the flavor of the toppings but not detract from the pizza itself.
Pizza and toppings are two different beasts, and though they work together to make a meal, pizza does not need the toppings to be a pizza, yet the toppings need a pizza to be toppings.
That which makes the pizza as yummy as a night after wine tasting in Walla Walla is the crust, sauce, and cheese.
A pizza needs several kinds of cheese so the mozzarella breaks when you bite it. That is unless you're one of those who enjoys the big stretch. I personally don't have a real need for a piece of cheese to be in my stomach and hanging out of my mouth at the same time.
Grating some romano or asiago, or any hard white cheese will keep the mozzarella in check.
A good pizza crust can be as simple or complex as you want. I like to add a bit of gluten flour, egg, powdered milk, and make one of my five cups of flour whole wheat, along with water, yeast, salt, and a little sugar.
I put my bread machine on dough mode and let it go. In fact that's all I use my bread machine for, the bread it makes just isn't my style.
When the machine is done, I plop the dough out on the flour covered cutting board and cut it into one cup pieces and put it into containers in the fridge. You gotta let the dough sit around for at least a day if you want it to be really good.
Then when it's time to make the pizza, I take some dough out of the fridge, toss it on a flour covered bread board, and slightly flatten it with a roller pin. I'll turn on the oven between 450 and 500 and let it heat up with a pizza stone in it.
A pizza stone is key. The thing gets hot enough so that the crust is cooked almost immediately and then all that's left to do is melt the cheese. I would like to somehow get my pizza stone even hotter to cook the crust crispier on the bottom but keep the oven at a temperature to not burn anything.
So now by the time the oven is warmed up, the dough should be at room temperature. If it isn't, I'll just put it on the oven for a minute to let it warm up. It stretches better when you toss it at room temperature.
Tossing the crust is pretty easy. I let it droop in my fingers until it's got enough size to stretch on it's own when I toss it. Just a simple toss/spin move, it's not hard to do if you're passionate about your pizza.
I've only dropped one on the kitchen floor... but I still made pizza out of it and no one knew the difference (my girlfriend at the time was the only one around and I decided not to tell.)
When you're making the pizza it's important to put corn meal on the bread board, the working board, because if you don't the pizza won't slide off onto the pizza stone. If it doesn't slide off and starts getting jumbled, you can usually save it by turning it into a calzone.
As long as the pizza crust isn't sticking, then it's easy to slide the pizza right off the board onto the hot pizza stone.
The pizza will be done in 5-10 minutes depending on the temp of the oven. I liek to set the timer to five minutes at first just so I can take a look at the pizza and see how it's doing. I don't like overcooking the pizza because I lose flavors and the delicate cripy to chewy balance that is so important in a pizza crust.
Sometimes if the crust looks done but the cheese isn't, I'll turn on the broiler for a minute to give it a quick blast.
Once the pizza is done, I let it cool on a broiling rack so it can settle a little bit without getting soggy. The pizza is basically pizza soup when it comes out of the oven, so letting it rest for a few minutes is key. Plus it's always annoying to burn the top of your mouth and then have to deal with little bits of skin hanging down all day long. You can never really get them, they just sort of hang there, constant reminders of that last hot food mistake.
Pizza is like life. You can see what's on top, but you don't always know what's going on beneath the covers, and even though it might look really really good, yummy, tasty, and wonderful, it might still suck no matter how hard you try.
But then again, sometimes it doesn't suck at all, and that's what I'm shooting for, both in pizza and life.
1:40 AM
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