Ciao Time #3 – St. Louis Style Pizza
Guys, I’ve been laaaazy. It’s been almost impossible to drag my butt away from the computer long enough to top a homemade dough with tomatoes and cheese. It’s also been restaurant week, so I’ve been eating out a lot. And work has sucked. And my kitchen is filthy and I don’t want to clean it. And about a million other excuses. Plus my soul is crying out for pot roast over buttered noodles. When my soul cries out for beef, I usually assume that I’m becoming anemic and need the iron. Strangely I become anemic at least three times a week. But last week my soul cried out for chicken wings, and who knows the medical reason for that? (If you can think of a physiological reason why my body should require chicken wings, please let me know in the comments so I can begin taking them medicinally.)
But I’ve been both putting this one off and trying to get it out of the way early, because I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never been to St. Louis, seen the Arch, or caught a Cardinals game. And it calls for Provel cheese, which I have never tried. Reviews range from disgusting cheese-food to the best stuff on earth. It actually is a cheese-food, or processed cheese – apparently (allegedly) made up of provolone, Swiss, and white cheddar, which sounds pretty good to me, but I’m a bit of a cheese purist when it comes to pizza – mozzarella, provolone, and a little parm – let’s keep it Italian, please. Cheddar cheese has no place on a pizza in my view (except that one time I made the bird pizza for my brother, but that doesn’t count).
BUT all that being said, I did not make a dough yesterday, and this one is supposed to be quick’n’easy – no yeast, no rising, no fermenting. And ugh, guys, I am so lazy today. I’ve headed downstairs three times to start cooking, and I just end up back here with another brownie, or a beer, or a new book. Anyway, this pizza goes from pantry to oven in less than half an hour (allegedly), so that’s what’s for dinner. Worst case scenario – we hit the Orange Leaf afterwards for an $8 bucket of yogurt. We will not starve.
Let’s go ahead and make the sauce first to get my mise-en-place ready. This is supposed to be sweeter and a little thicker than a normal sauce, so once I drag myself downstairs (again) we have:
6 oz. can of tomato paste
10 oz. crushed tomatoes (which only come in 14 oz. cans, TYVM)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon basil
Salt
(Look! Like any other quality blogger, I just happened to leave attractive fresh ingredients just lying around sexily in the background. While a bulb of garlic, some fresh basil, and tomatoes would look lovely, none of those things appear in this recipe, so I went with what I have, which is zucchini, bananas, and an comically large onion.)
Sauce!
The dough is:
2 cups flours (using bread flour, since it was great in the Chicago pizza)
1 teaspoon of baking powder (I like the aluminum-free kind, not because of crunchy health reasons, but because I think you can taste something metallic when you use the regular stuff. Plus – seriously – why is there aluminum in my baking powder? How did it get there?)
¾ cups of water
Salt – no particular measurements
2 teaspoons of corn syrup – which is mixed in with the water.
The onion is so large it’s infiltrating all my photographs. I expect it to show up in the background of someone’s wedding pictures on Buzzfeed any day now.
Mix dry ingredients together, then add water/corn syrup. Try to mix using a fork – doesn’t work. Revert to hands. Get all sticky and doughy. Phone rings as I finish up – it’s Aunt M and I have to take this, desperately trying to wash just one hand with phone awkwardly tucked into shoulder. Phone call requires extensive note-taking, of course. Dough is now everywhere. It is legion. One perk is that even though it took about 2 minutes to make this dough, the kitchen, my clothes, and even my face look like I’ve been toiling for hours.
I roll the dough out onto parchment paper, not trusting my ability to peel it successfully off my countertop. This makes two (approximately) twelve-inch crusts. They are more or less round.
Now…. The Provel.
This is a scary, strange, new cheese. I love new cheeses, so I’ll dive right in for a taste (recipe calls for ¾ lb., shredded). It’s…fine. Mostly tastes like bland American cheese. I can tell it will melt beautifully though. Time to assemble dinner, while the oven preheats to 550(!).
Again I’m going with a standard pepperoni. I stick one into the oven for 8 minutes, pull it out, aaaaand –
Yep. Parchment paper is generally good for between 400 to 450 degrees. Then it gets very, very brittle and cannot support the weight of, say, a pizza. Good thing I made two!
Looks pretty good!
Okay, here’s the truth at the end of this very long story. We ended up having dinner at Orange Leaf (frozen yogurt buckets). My husband manages to put away two small pieces, but I can’t make it through one. It smells and tastes like the freshest, grossest frozen pizza you can imagine. Everything is bland and awful – the cheese is horrifying, the sauce is somehow both too thick and completely flavorless.
I’m glad I got this one out of the way and hopefully will never, ever, have to suffer through St. Louis Style Pizza again.
And my soul cries out once more for pot roast.
illdothedisheslater 