Taking the Pizza Stone for a Spin
A few months ago, Jessica and I made pizzas over at Joel and Ashley’s, and were duly impressed with the results. Naturally, a pizza stone appeared on our registry, and perhaps just as naturally, Joel and Ashley gave it to us — hooray! A month later (Tuesday night), we took it for a spin.
The clincher was when we found pre-made pizza crust hanging in the deli section at our local Publix. We snapped it right up and got a few more ingredients. Tuesday found us sprinkling the stone with cornmeal, heating it up in the oven while assembling the pizza (we managed to work in the Tomato Basil sauce mentioned previously, black olives, fresh mushrooms (not sautéed), pepperoni, and grated cheese). The results were very, very good, and probably would have been much better with our own dough (next time!).
After seeing how truly easy it is to make your own pizza, unless we’re feeling terribly lazy/pressed for time — not out of the realm of possibility — I can’t imagine wanting to order a pizza ever again. It’s got to be healthier, the ingredients are just right, and it’s a great experimental medium, too — I can’t wait to attempt to work in some spinach and peppers in our next pizza. On different halves, that is.
February 2nd, 2006 at 5:26 pm
I made my first “from scratch” pizza a couple weeks ago. After experimenting and making two more, I’ve also concluded that I won’t order pizza from out unless it is a “dinner emergency” — the stuff turns out awesome!
If you have time, you really need to make your own dough. Time consuming? Yeah, somewhat, but the time needed to let the dough rise is perfect for chopping vegetables, heating the stone, etc. I cannot stress how profoundly satisfying the whole process is and I urge you to give it a shot next time. Should get you through enough dough to make two pizzas, despite being a junky web page.
Still working on the sauce on this side — damn, I loves me some garlic!
February 2nd, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Awesome! Thanks for the recipe link, Vince.
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:36 am
Wow. This blog sure had turned to domestic themes. Cooking, recipes, trips to JoAnn. I wonder what that is all about…