October 22, 2008

Pizza Philosophy

Since the economy, and perhaps not so incidentally, work, slowed down, I've been cooking more.

Last week, on Sunday, I made homemade pizza dough and let it rise most of the week, before cooking our first homemade pizza P1000937which we cooked and let cool on the pizza stone for which we registered.

It was delicious.

However, thankfully, there was leftover dough.

So, tonight, I endeavored to make the second homemade pizza.

The Pizza Stone Did Not Agree.

Happily, I stretched the frozen after 6 days of cool-rising in the fridge dough. It looked so happy and civilized, even better than the straight from rising stage version I'd made a week prior.

Sliced grape tomatoes, basil, and sliced wet mozzerella -- you can imagine where this goes...

*GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE GUTTER*

Our wedding-gifted pizza stone exploded into three parts. I wouldn't have believed it had I not been watching the rise of the dough and browning of the toppings myself -- a 7 minute rise at 550 F doesn't take that long to observe, and I love food, so, yeah, I was camped out in front of the oven window tonight. What? Anyways--it was a phenomenal event. What kind of energy must have been stored to cause the stone to split like this? (Mind you, we didn't move anything before taking this picture -- this is exactly what nature plus an electric oven created!):

P1000953

And now, I must say, I wholeheartedly endorse the metal circular tins with holes in the bottom for pizza cooking in the oven. I aspire to own one soon!

Also, pre-cooked pizza sauce is better than fresh tomatoes cooked while the dough rises. Enough said.

Happy cooking!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SAME thing happened to our pizza stone (also recently pressed into service in light of the husband's increased free time). I am not the biggest fan of the air ventilated pan thing. You can get a better crust on the barbecue. But I am also going to try a regular dark cookie sheet, preheated, and see how that works in comparison to the vent pan.

Arvay said...

Mmm cheese... Mmmm... Something is broken in that picture?