guess what? I made pizza!

It really would have been best to do a photo-heavy, step-by-step on this particular post, since everyone loves pizza and wants to know how to make it and also because it’s so satisfying to see an actual pizza be born from a lump of odd-colored dough. But none of this occurred to me until after I put the pizza in the oven, so oh well.

Anyway, it turns out making a pizza is not actually rocket science (or brain surgery, or rocket surgery as I call it when I’m more confused than usual). It’s pretty easy, just time-consuming and you have to be patient through all the various steps and dough-resting periods and such. I think most people actually assume that making pizza will be easy, but I for some reason always thought it would be some Herculean task. Last week I had homemade pizza over at my friend, Kate’s, and because I arrived a little early, I got to see it being made and thence came to the conclusion that it didn’t look that hard. So this week when I went to the store I bought all the makings for the same sausage, pear, and caramelized onion white pizza she made.

I used the same dough recipe Kate used, from The Joy of Cooking. The only thing this recipe does not include is a cooking time – although I suppose it might depend on what you top the pizza with. I ended up keeping my pizzas in the oven for a little under 20 minutes, but I was checking them pretty constantly. Even though I switched racks half-way through one of the pizzas still managed to get a little too crisp, but both pizzas tasted delicious.

Trevor came home and sniffed the air then said, “is something burning?” This is the disadvantage of using old baking sheets with unremovable crud caked on – now matter what you are making, which would otherwise smell mouthwatering, everything just smells like burning. And now my apartment smells like burning, too.

The good news is, the actual pizza does not taste like burning. Trevor didn’t like the pear, which I love, but otherwise it was a hit. I think next time I might leave the sausage ever so slightly undercooked, as it got just a little overcooked in the oven, and I would get different toppings to put on the second pizza for variety.