101 Ways to F*** Up a Pizza!

I really should have known better. On a night when I literally had no time to spare to make dinner I choose one of the most consuming of all recipes in CL. Why, why, why??? Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment, or perhaps I am just a space cadet that doesn't think time exists in this world. Well I was determined to make it, so last night, I made pizza!

35. Pizza Dough - *Junk Food*
36. Quick Tomato Sauce - *Junk Food*
37. Margherita - *Junk Food*
38. Raw pizza topping (ham, rocket and parmesan) - *Junk Food*

Before I go into detail (because, as we all know, brevity is not a quality I possess!), let me just show you the aftermath of the evening.

Before I reveal how such a thing happened to my poor book, let me start off the beginning of the night. I still needed to get lots of things for tonight's dinner, and also for last night's dinner, so I decided to take the subway to Stop 'n' Shop after work. I can't ever spend just a few minutes there. Happily, I found all the things I needed but time did not stand still and it was getting quite late. After schlepping home with my unbelievably heavy bags (lots of canned goods, adds up!) I set to work making the pizza dough at 6:30pm. That is usually when we eat dinner!! I was feeling faint and quite hungry at this point, but I didn't let that stop me.

So I got on with the dough. I have to say the recipe for the dough worked a treat. I just mixed up flour, yeast, salt, tepid water, and some olive oil. After the dough kneaded for about five minutes in my KitchenAid, it was gorgeous and silky.

Basic Pizza Dough

I let the dough rise in a warm place for about an hour, and then started on the Quick Tomato Sauce. Basically, I warmed some garlic slices in a bit of olive oil over a low heat. Meanwhile, I squished some canned, peeled tomatoes to oblivion until I got a sort of pureé. I had forgotten what juicy little suckers these were, so while I squished to oblivion, I also got tomato juice squirted on myself, my hair, the floor, the sink, etc. The sink looked like I had just stabbed someone to death.

Massacre in south Brooklyn!!!

Then the 'assaulted' tomatoes were added to the garlic with some salt. I chopped up some parsley and added this as well to make the sauce.

basics of the sauce: tomatoes, garlic, oil and parsley

This sauce was allowed to simmer for a few minutes, and it was done!!! Looked fabulous, if I do say so myself.

Quick Tomato Sauce

At the time the sauce was done, the bell in my oven dinged that the dough had enough rising. At this point, I was also chopping up mozzarella and talking to my gorgeous friend, Lisa, on the phone. Multitasker, I am!

It's important to mention now that my kitchen was running out of space, and fast!!! The one reason I like to keep dinner simple is because I just do not have a lot of room to have a few cooking stations. Everything basically needs to be done in the little space between the oven and the sink and on my tiny counter space near the fridge. Bad planning, being extremely exhausted (I had swept the entire apartment while the dough was rising too!), and hungry, made me really start freaking out at this point.

I put in a couple of pizza trays into the oven and cranked it up to its highest setting. Those who have heard me describe my nuclear reactor oven should get an idea of how hot it got in my kitchen at this point.

So I started working on the pizza dough. I punched the dough down and divided it into four. It is at this point that I read in the recipe that each circle was to measure around 24 centimeters!!! What???!!!! When I had drooled over the pictures in CL I had never noticed the pizzas were so large, I mean relatively. I thought they were little personal pizza types, so to make four would mean a lot of counter space for rolling. I did the best I could but I honestly was getting very annoyed with myself at this point. With limited space I could only get about 18cm diameter for each, and then I was really cursing myself because there was no way I could get a baking sheet to hold all four. I had put in two baking sheets into the oven, but I couldn't work out how I could transfer the pizzas when the sheets were so hot already. I guess all of this could have been figured out if I was in the right mind, but I just wasn't. It was already something like 8:30pm and dinner was nowhere near ready.

But I perservered. I got the toppings on the pizza. I left the toppings off two of the pizzas as they were going to have the raw filling, meaning they would go into the hot oven for about 10 minutes and then get the raw fillings put on for another 5 minutes of cooking.

The Margherita had fresh mozzarella and grated poorman'sgrana, while the raw pizza toppings, suggested by Tom, were parma ham (I used serrano!), rocket (arugula), and shaved parmesan.. Whoopsie, forgot the parmesan, even though it was right there and I had already used it on the other pizzas. Sheesh!

Raw pizzas ready for cooking

The raw ingredients

So the cooking did not go well at all. Only one of the pizzas seemed to brown and I couldn't exactly figure out how to get each to brown evenly since I was working with two very hot pizza trays. Then, I realized that I did put the oven to the highest setting, THE GRILL/BROIL SETTING, so of course the pizzas weren't getting brown, they weren't being cooked, only the grill part was functioning!!! Errgggh! Or maybe they were, I don't know, I still haven't figured out this oven after three years of living in my apartment. I quickly switched it to the highest setting, but not the Broil setting.

So instead of the raw toppings being, well, raw, they were instead cooked to a fine crisp. I guess in the end all pizzas looked OK. Rafa seemed to like them; but at 9pm I was so hungry and tired I didn't care anymore!!!

If you're wondering what happened to my poor book above, well I was seriously running out of room when rolling out the pizzas and I thought a book would be an ideal place to continue rolling out pizzas... Erm, well it wasn't. Thinking about it now, I have no idea what I was thinking. Oh well, a sign of love for a book is that it looks completely demolished, so I have achieved my purpose!

I am not usually this manic; last night just wasn't my night. It's OK; Tom has another sauce recipe for pizzas and loads of other topping suggestions, so as Arnie says, I Will Be Back!