Where ya been, Dishes?
Sorry guys. The holiday hustle had me pretty busy for awhile, and some stuff went on that made me feel not-so-funny. Then I lost my cooking mojo for a couple weeks – ever had one of those things? When you just can’t think of anything interesting to cook or do, and the couch is calling your name? But I’m back and I’m bad, and I’m here to tell you about some not-so-great pizza. (Spoiler alert!)
I had a few bad moments where I fell under the spell of a false prophet – Peter Reinhart, I’m looking at you – and (as usually happens with false prophets) got a big let down. After reading “American Pie – My Search for the Perfect Pizza”, I believed in this man above all things – so many recipes, ideas, inspiration! So the project was Pizza Americana – or what he (falsely) implies is like chain pizza – The Huts, the Johns, etc.
I will admit – I like most pizza – within reason. I’ll happily eat the Little Caesar’s $5.00 Hot-N-Ready, we get Papa Johns pretty often since it’s close to the house, and I have a secret liking for Pizza Hut – the greasiest grossest thing out there. Pizza day in the cafeteria at school with the soggy cardboard squares – heaven.
(I draw the line at Dominos though. The weirdest ad campaign I can think of is when the put a focus group in a room and asked what they thought about it Dominos. They said a variety of negative things, then were asked if they thought Dominos used real cheese or tomatoes in their pizza. Everyone said no, then – surprise! The walls fall away and they’re actually on a farm where they’re growing tomatoes and milking cows and spiders are befriending pigs and stuff. But seriously. Dude. They just said your pizza tastes like shit. Congratulations – you use real tomatoes and somehow make them taste like shit. Bring back the Noid, I say.)
Again, I digress.
So. Peter Reinhart’s Pizza Americana. First we make the dough, since it will rise for twenty-four hours:
5 Cups of Bread Flour
3 Tablespoons sugar or honey (I used sugar)
2 Teaspoons of salt
2 Teaspoons of instant yeast
¼ Cup olive oil
1 Cup milk
¾ Cup water at room temperature
Dump it all into the mixer and mix until it “gathers to form a coarse ball”. This looks pretty coarse.
Let the dough rest for five minutes, then mix some more. Divide into four equal pieces (this makes four pizzas! I only want one! Well, two to be honest.), rub each piece with olive oil, and place in a ziplock bag. Refrigerate overnight. Take out and let rest at room temperature. Then he recommends tossing the dough to form the crust, and helpfully provides four extremely terrible, grainy, blurry black and white pictures on how to accomplish this. Tossing pizza dough is like playing the drums or tap dancing. It looks super easy and fun until you actually try to do it. Once the dough is in my hands, I have no clue where to start. Instead I roll and stretch to a roughly roundish shape.
The sauce he recommends is his All-Purpose Marinara Pizza Sauce recipe, which is basically just a can of tomato puree with spices in it, so I cheat and reach for my trusty Penzey’s Pizza Spices to save time. Yes, I’m cheating and breaking my own rules. Sue me.
Then I cheat again and again. He wants me to fry the pepperoni in olive oil, which strikes me as counter-intuitive. It’s greasy enough right? I lay the pepperoni on paper towels and give them a quick (very quick!) spin in the microwave to remove just a little grease. Then add a cup of full-moisture (read: hard to find and expensive) shredded mozzarella. Another cheat happens here when he recommends adding half a cup of cheddar, Monterey Jack, or gouda. I am anti-cheddar for pizza, think gouda sounds weird, and don’t have any Monterey Jack. Top with half a cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano, which I DO have, thankfully. The toppings go under the cheese on this one – the pepperoni grease will flavor the sauce.
Then it goes into a 500 degree oven on a pizza stone for 10 to 12 minutes. (If you recall, my pizza stone suffered an unfortunate shattering incident, so I use an upside-down cookie sheet until Santa can get over here with a new stone.) Here it is – looks great right?
Meh. I give this pizza three and a half mehs. I don’t believe fried pepperoni, gouda, or a different mix of spices would have helped. The crust is lovely, but bland and doughy. The sauce, which I usually love, is fine but nothing special on this. The cheese is fine. But most importantly, this pizza resembles nothing like a chain pizza, take-out pizza, or anything like that at all. I can only describe it as similar to a pub pizza, but from a pub where they don’t know how to make pizza very well. It’s fine, it’s okay. It was NOT worth all the work.
Peter Reinhart, I’m putting you on notice. Fool me once…
Since I don’t feel like making three more average, okay pizzas, I turn the rest of the ingredients into some kind of pepperoni pizza monkey bread that receives rave reviews at work, and which I will return to at some point, since it made the best of these so-so ingredients.
illdothedisheslater 