![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And the sweet, sweet smell of burnt^H^H^H^H^cooked onion fills the air.
My first thought was: This will be pizza the way it ought to be made.
My second thought was: Holy crap, I'm going to have a lot of pizza.
"The way it ought to be made" is from scratch, beginning by dissolving yeast into water on the way to making dough. This is, naturally, the first place that things could go wrong. After all, I have no way of measuring 110-degree water, and if it's off by ten degrees either way PEOPLE DIE! So I guessed, and let the faucet get as hot as it could, and used that water, which naturally cooled off instantly. Unfazed, I started mixing up the dough, and let myself be fascinated as the flour did its magic. Eventually I had a blob of stuff that felt about right. Hey, I'm supposed to knead this stuff?
I push it around in the bowl, vaguely remembering and mimicing the fold-push-repeat motion that I saw somewhere. It was either a cookbook or a porn, and I'm definitely hoping the first. Eventually the stuff got awfully stiff and thick, so I cover it up and put it in the oven to rise. (The oven's been off since last night. I'm not entirely clueless.)
Next step, although rising is two hours of waiting, is to assemble the ingredients. Now, my pizzas are not to be trifled with. I once went to the Muddhole and asked them to make me a pizza with everything on it. (They refused.) But I went to the store last night with the direct purpose of finding anything I could reasonably put on a pizza, and getting some. As such, I came home with olives, mushrooms, and pineapple to supplement what I already have. Added to these are the ham, chicken, and onions I already had here - the latter two sauteed (frozen water into hot oil! fuck, my forearms, the splattering!) to kill stuff and dull the taste, respectively. Now the whole mess sits in a bucket in my fridge, waiting for the dough to rise.
I hope I have enough sauce. Correction - I hope I have enough sauce in the jar that I already have opened. If I open the second one, I'll feel compelled to use up the rest of it in the next week or two. Of course, I probably don't, with my luck.
Um, I'm making a giant pizza. I'm the only one here who'd eat it. Anyone interested in an impromptu cooking group, by which I mean you come over here and eat* pizza that may or may not actually turn out? It should be done sometime around 9:00. There's also the usual assortment of things to do that have already been here, which I've listed enough times before.
But OMG is there going to be a lot of pizza.
click
*Offer void where prohibited, outside the Claremont area, to vegetarians, kosher Jews, or those squeamish to fungus
My second thought was: Holy crap, I'm going to have a lot of pizza.
"The way it ought to be made" is from scratch, beginning by dissolving yeast into water on the way to making dough. This is, naturally, the first place that things could go wrong. After all, I have no way of measuring 110-degree water, and if it's off by ten degrees either way PEOPLE DIE! So I guessed, and let the faucet get as hot as it could, and used that water, which naturally cooled off instantly. Unfazed, I started mixing up the dough, and let myself be fascinated as the flour did its magic. Eventually I had a blob of stuff that felt about right. Hey, I'm supposed to knead this stuff?
I push it around in the bowl, vaguely remembering and mimicing the fold-push-repeat motion that I saw somewhere. It was either a cookbook or a porn, and I'm definitely hoping the first. Eventually the stuff got awfully stiff and thick, so I cover it up and put it in the oven to rise. (The oven's been off since last night. I'm not entirely clueless.)
Next step, although rising is two hours of waiting, is to assemble the ingredients. Now, my pizzas are not to be trifled with. I once went to the Muddhole and asked them to make me a pizza with everything on it. (They refused.) But I went to the store last night with the direct purpose of finding anything I could reasonably put on a pizza, and getting some. As such, I came home with olives, mushrooms, and pineapple to supplement what I already have. Added to these are the ham, chicken, and onions I already had here - the latter two sauteed (frozen water into hot oil! fuck, my forearms, the splattering!) to kill stuff and dull the taste, respectively. Now the whole mess sits in a bucket in my fridge, waiting for the dough to rise.
I hope I have enough sauce. Correction - I hope I have enough sauce in the jar that I already have opened. If I open the second one, I'll feel compelled to use up the rest of it in the next week or two. Of course, I probably don't, with my luck.
Um, I'm making a giant pizza. I'm the only one here who'd eat it. Anyone interested in an impromptu cooking group, by which I mean you come over here and eat* pizza that may or may not actually turn out? It should be done sometime around 9:00. There's also the usual assortment of things to do that have already been here, which I've listed enough times before.
But OMG is there going to be a lot of pizza.
click
*Offer void where prohibited, outside the Claremont area, to vegetarians, kosher Jews, or those squeamish to fungus
sorry, back seat baking here
That said, at least from my experience...
*temperature of the water doesn't matter so much - just make it warm
*kneading is much much easier to do on a countertop then in a bowl. Have you ever worked with clay? Kneading bread dough is the same motion as when you knead clay at the beginning to reach the right consistency...
*for rising dough, what works really well is to heat some water in the microwave first, then put the bowl (with a cloth cover) in the microwave with the warm water so it's kinda warm and steamy. Alternately, if you have no microwave, warm water in the oven can help too.
Regardless, the pizza sounds really good (aside from the fact that I would choose very different toppings :) ) and I hope it tasted good.
Re: back seat baking
Re: sorry, back seat baking here
Really!? That's exactly the stuff I've been wanting to find, and complaining that any cookbook I'd ever seen or heard of didn't have. Assuming that the whys and wherefores and stuff you mention are the same as in my head, I'll have to pick that up somewhere.