Pizza-making tutorial

I was making pizza for dinner the other night, and it occurred to me I should photograph the steps for anyone interested in a pizza-making tutorial. 

Pizza delivery is absolutely unheard of out here, and we seldom go out for it either, because it's SO much cheaper to make it at home. There are zillions of ways to make pizza; this is how I do it.

I start with my much-faded recipe for the crust:

It says:

• 1 1/2 cups flour

• 2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

• Garlic/salt/basil (to taste)

• 1 1/4 cups warm water

• 2 tablespoons oil

Mix until blended. Add 2 to 4 cups additional flour to make a stuff dough.

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Mixing pizza dough takes just a few minutes.

Adding all the ingredients to the bowl:

Adding enough additional flour to make a stiff dough:

Getting ready to knead.

Kneading before:

Kneading after. I don't knead for very long, just a couple minutes:

I drizzle a bit of oil into the mixing bowl...

...then plop the dough back into the bowl, flipping it once to make sure it's coated with oil.

Then I cover the bowl with a damp towel and let it rise in the oven (where it's warm) for, I dunno, about an hour or so.

Meanwhile the mozzarella cheese and pepperoni has been defrosting. I buy both in bulk at Chef's Store (a restaurant supply store), though I look forward to the day when I can make my own mozzarella cheese again.

When it's time to make the pizzas, I drizzle a little olive oil on the pizza pans...

...and spread it out. Then I sprinkle some cornmeal on the pan, which helps prevent the crust from sticking (and gives the crust kind of a nice crunch too).

Here's the risen dough.

I cut it in half unevenly. That's because I like a thinner pizza crust, and Don likes it a bit thicker.

Spreading the dough takes mere seconds per pizza. It's at this point I have to keep track of which pizza is which.

To Don's pizza, I add standard pizza sauce.

To my pizza, I add pesto sauce. This stuff makes Don gag, but I love it.

Ready for cheese.

Cheese:

For homemade pizzas, we tend to be lazy and just use pepperoni, but of course they can be dolled up in an infinite number of ways.

Into the oven, about 425F for 25 minutes (at which point we start monitoring). I like my pizza a bit darker, so I always put mine on the bottom rack and keep it baking longer.

Don's pizza, finished.

In my opinion, homemade pizza is every bit as good (if not better) than restaurant pizza, and hand's down better than frozen pizza. And it literally costs pennies on the dollar, especially if the ingredients are purchased in bulk.

This is a long post with lots of photos for a process that actually takes very little time. So there you go, a modest pizza-making tutorial.

Why labels are good

Let me tell you a small story.

Many years ago, back when we lived in Oregon, we needed a chest freezer. Montgomery Wards was going out of business at the time, so we went and bought the biggest chest freezer they had (it was enormous).

Our Oregon house was old (1874) and small (850 square feet), and we had had absolutely no room for such a monstrous appliance. There was no question where it would go: the basement, which was little more than a dirt-floored half-space between the floor of the house above and the sloped hill beneath.

The basement was damp and dark, with no lights and only accessible by an outside door. Except for the darkness, it was a great place for a freezer, and we used it a lot. It allowed us to do things like freeze surplus meals and take advantage of inexpensive or past-its-prime produce.

One day Don expressed interest in some homemade onion soup I had previously frozen in individual-sized portions. "I know just where it is," I said confidently. Taking a flashlight, I went into the basement, fetched the onion soup in its baggie, and brought it into the kitchen where I put it on the stove to heat.

As the soup heated, I noticed a lovely, fragrant smell permeating the kitchen. It smelled delicious, but most decidedly NOT like onion soup. Further investigation revealed I was simmering puréed bananas from a too-good-to-pass-up sale the week before, which I had frozen for future batches of banana bread. We chuckled over the "banana soup" incident for a long time.

Now fast forward to yesterday. I had plans to make pizza for dinner, so the first thing I did was reach into the chest freezer for the shredded mozzarella cheese I always keep there. (You can guess where this is going, right?)

I let the cheese defrost for a couple hours. Meanwhile I made the pizza dough, let it rise, and formed the pizzas.

But when I reached into the bag of cheese to spread it over the sauce, I pulled out -- rice. Leftover rice I'd frozen a couple weeks ago.

Labels. Yes, labels are good.

August chaos

This time of year, it should come as no surprise that the house is a mess. It's the busy season for our woodcraft business, and tidiness must go by the wayside as we labor to keep up with the workload.

Yesterday evening I looked around and realized the house was in the typical state of chaos, with multiple projects going on, that usually happens this time of year. To wit:

We glued bottoms on about 130 tankards.

I've been canning blueberries as they come ripe. Yesterday I canned six pints.

Pizza for dinner.

Glue pans, tin cans, tankards. Typical tableau.

Half-inch oak (for tankard bottoms), used duct tape (it holds the tankard bodies together until we glue), and boxes and buckets for transporting between the house and shop.

Messes everywhere, right?

I remember once, a long long time ago, I visited someone's beautiful house that was in immaculate condition. It was so beautiful it was almost like a museum. And I remember wondering -- didn't these people ever DO anything? Did they live in a house or a home?

A home full of projects -- woodcrafts, canning, dinner from scratch -- is a happy home, in my opinion. Yes, I managed to get the kitchen clean before bedtime, but at this time of year nothing stays tidy for long.

At least, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Busy busy busy

Man oh man it's been a busy day.

As usual, my morning started around 5:30 am. By 7:30 I was out feeding Samson and two cows (the cows belong to a neighbor, they're getting bred by our bull) who are in the bull pen.

Washed and hung four loads of laundry on the indoor clothes racks.

I also canned thirteen pints of pinto beans (for making refried beans).

I canned these 18 pints of chicken stock yesterday.

Don was in the shop most of the late morning and afternoon, cutting tankard sides for a production run of 150 pieces or so. He brought them in in batches of 50, and the girls taped them up, ready for gluing.

Trust me, these are intimidating piles.

It was also my turn to bring snacks for church tomorrow, so I made a quadruple batch of shortbread cookies.

We're also hosting our neighborhood potluck tomorrow, and I decided to make chicken strips. Here Younger Daughter is crushing saltine crackers into crumbs.

Three cookie sheets of chicken strips, ready to go into the freezer until tomorrow's dinner.

Meanwhile Older Daughter made pizza dough since we were planning pizza for dinner.

She also made a hearty batch of steeped iced tea.

Don glued up one of the piles of tankards.

Later I glued up another pile. We got a bit less than half the tankards glued.

The girls split watering the garden (a two-hour process) since I was so busy in the house).

Here's the risen pizza dough.

From this, we made three pizzas -- two tomato...

...and one pesto. This will provide us with breakfasts and lunches for a couple of days.

Can't forget evening chores: feeding livestock, feeding and watering chickens, topping off all water tanks.

I don't know about you, but I'm pooped. Once this glass is empty, I'm off to bed.

G'night.