Oh the shame of not being able to make something as simple as a pizza - at least not as well as my daughter.
After watching an instructional video Emily made for me, I was ready to tackle homemade pizza dough. That upstart kid of mine made it look so easy to form the ball, carve out the outside rim and then stretch the interior. As if. I think I read that this dough is one of the ones you don't want to manhandle too much so there I was, gingerly trying to look like MamaBarbara en la Cucina.
Let's just say it was a good thing there's no video evidence of my experience with the dough.
Last week, I bought fresh asparagus to make Smitten Kitchen's shaved asparagus pizza but, somehow, I let that go bad. Making pizza last night was actually the second choice of what I'd planned to prepare for dinner so there was no time to get new veggies in the house. This meant going with what I could find - and that included pepperoni, sausage, and lots of different kinds of cheeses.
Another admission: on a cooking blog, I should be writing up all the cheeses with careful studies of how they blend with each other, which ones go together, the types that are perfect for home-made pizzas, and so on. And I should be making people laugh with my marvelously witty takes on cheese lore. Too bad that isn't likely to happen anytime soon with me writing my experiences. Emily is the cheese expert - I'm the one who grew up on American cheese slices and cheez-whiz for really special occasions.
So, what I write might make true Cheeseheads cringe. I just grated up fresh mozzarella, parmeson, romano and a bit of cheddar cheese for the pizzas. I also used an easy red sauce recipe I found on the internet, though I was very sparing in my usage, as I don't really like the sauce on pizzas.
The pizzas turned out OK. Brian ate a number of slices so I guess he was pleased. I felt the crust was a bit too "crunchy" and the cheeses a bit skimpy. When I was piling them on before cooking, it seemed like a huge mound but, in the cooking, they seemed to shrink up.
One fun sidenote - I got to use the wonderful pizza plates we bought in Europe. Just looking at those plates brought back so many pleasant memories of leisurely meals in Heidelberg and other cities throughout our travels. Good times!
Pizza is simple in one sense, but so not in another. You should see some of my failures. I think after making it a couple times you learn how to handle the dough a little better. Trader Joe's makes really good fresh dough if you want to play around with tossing some until you get the hang of it (without having to spend the time making the dough).
ReplyDeleteThose cheeses sound yummy. I haven't tried cheddar on pizza, but you can never go wrong with cheddar.