Pizza Pizzaz

I was thinking, in a lazy way, about pizza, this morning.

Actually, I was sort of doing everything in a lazy way -- the weather is just gorgeous, and it's quite tempting to just sit and feel the breezes come in through the window, listen to the birds, and all of that. I needed that. I completely destroyed breakfast this morning -- tried a new bacon from a known source, and it was awful, simultaneously charred and undercooked, and the waffles came out equally bad, with no internal structure at all, and sticking to the griddle despite having greased it. Argh! So my motivation to do things for breakfast was about as low as it could get. Sitting -- yeah, I could do that. So I did. I've been trying half-and-half in my coffee instead of Coffeemate (I recall a joke about someone who called an American relative, perplexed about a recipe that the Yank'd sent - "This calls for half-and-half? Half-and-half of what?) as a way of saving a bit of money, and what I've found is, the extra money for the Coffeemate's worth it -- smoother and, since it's flavored, tastier. So I just sat, and leafed through the paper, and drank coffee.

None of this is about pizza. I should get to that, or change the title of this post, hmm?

So I was leafing through the RSS reader, skipping over the articles about torture (what would you do if you had bin Laden and you were sure that he knew of a nuclear weapon that was going to be detonated?) and the economy (things are beginning to look up, just a bit, here and there, but it's going to be a long time until...) and politics (Republicans stamped their feet in anger as the Democrats announced plans to do to them, relative to the budget, what they'd done to the Democrats, years ago) , and coming at last to the category where I have feeds to do with cooking and baking. I usually look through them, doing a little triage - if the first-up post in a given feed has something I'd like to make, I bookmark it; if it's something that's interesting but not something I want to make, I just skip to the next feed, and if its something that triggers a what the hell is that, why would ANYONE want to eat that?, I look at the next post for that site; if its okay, I just skip to the next feed, but if it triggers that same response, I delete the feed entirely. Hey, life's too short.

This was one of the well, I don't feel like making this, but gosh this is an interesting article ones. It was on the Bread and Honey site, and it was about pizza. It was, as they say, good, talking about pizza texture and the whole process of making the dough. The woman who writes that blog said that she prefers crisp thin pizzas, but she's gotten used to thicker, more breadlike ones. I'm the other way -- I prefer bread-like pizza, something you can chew on a bit. I know that's sort of a religious thing -- thick versus thin! A slice versus a slab! Traditional toppings versus whatever takes your fancy! I do think on occasion that I'd like to make more pizzas, both for the experience and because I like it. Every so often, I learn something -- like one article that suggested lightly baking the dough before putting toppings on (keeps them from weighing down the dough when you transfer it to the grill or the stone). That makes sense to me. Another mentioned that there's no religion about shaping the dough -- you can do the 'toss in the air' thing, if you want, but it's equally okay to just stretch it with your hands -- or even roll it out, if you want. Peter Reinhart won't be coming by to pronounce on your food; it's yours.

I do occasionally think about getting those 'pizza spices' packets from King Arthur, but, hey, there must be someone who's figured that out. Maybe I'll go read some more food blogs....