Make Pizza

I like pizza. Shocking, isn't it? Like many people, I have enjoyed the delicious combination of dough, sauce, and cheese since I was a kid. For a long time I dreamed about making my own pizza at home, but it wasn't until I was around 30 that I finally decided to give it a try.

My first attempt was disappointing to say the least. The crust was baked hard like a cracker and was difficult to chew. The sauce, Newman's Own pasta sauce from a jar, was over-applied, and overpowering. The cheese had been on the verge of burning, baked into a kind of solid orange mat that clung to the pie while also recoiling from it, leaving considerable gaps between it and the sauce.

After that first attempt, I didn't try again for some time.

Then, around 7 years ago, I made a commitment to get better at it. How would I do it? I would "make pizza every Friday night." Eventually, my technique, and the results, would have to improve. Right? Right?

My wife was pregnant with our first son, and I looked forward to establishing a family tradition that the kids would also enjoy. Thus, Friday evenings were known from the start of this grand experiment as "Dad's Pizza Night."

A Pizza Recipe

Here's how to make a pizza, in four easy steps:

1. Shape the dough. Ideally into a pizza-like shape.

   

2. Add sauce. How much is mostly a matter of taste.

   

3. Add cheese. And/or other toppings as you see fit.



4. Bake. On a stone, on a pan. Whatever. Just don't forget to stop baking at some point!

   

5. Ta da! Pizza. Enjoy.

   

You might have noticed that this recipe is considerably easier than some, leaving out the painstakingly opinionated advice about how the dough should be made, which flours to use, whether the sauce should be cooked or not, fresh mozzarella or aged, how hot to heat the oven, whether to use a stone, whether to use a peel, etc., etc., etc.

The recipe is simple because I believe you should start your pizza-making adventure by eliminating most of the complexity, thereby minimizing the number of things that go wrong. For such a simple food, pizza preparation can be fraught with peril. It occurred to me when I started my "Dad's Pizza Night" tradition, that it was hard enough to modestly master the four steps above without delving into the nuanced questions of how each step could be improved. For first-time, and even tenth-time pizza makers, just getting the pizza into the oven should be considered a triumph.

I encourage you to start by simply buying all the components for your pizza pre-made, at whatever level of convenience you find most approachable. Bags of pizza dough are available at most supermarkets for under $2. Buy a bag of pre-shredded mozzarella if you fret grating it from the block. Cans labeled "pizza sauce" will actually get you in the right ballpark. Oh, and don't forget to buy two of everything. This stuff is relatively cheap, and if you don't end up needing backup supplies to avert a crisis, you'll have an excuse to make pizza again soon.

After you get the feel for assembling and baking pizza, you'll be in a position to evaluate which components could be improved. After the stress of worrying whether the thing will even be edible has been soothed, consider trying a recipe for homemade sauce. Or switch it up and use fresh mozzarella (tip: pat the mozzarella very dry with paper towels). Eventually, you'll probably also make your own dough. And it will all seem relatively easy.

If your pizza adventure is anything like mine, you'll forever be finding faults in the fruit of your labor, while nonetheless enjoying it more and more. After 7 years of making pizza nearly every week, I still consider myself to be more or less a novice. I'm frustrated that my progress has seemed so slow, but on the other hand, I am sometimes quite proud to look back at how far I've come.

Over the years I've also developed a lot of very fine-grained opinions about pizza making that I would love to share with you. I've purposefully left them out of this post, because the message I want to send is that people who are interested in making pizza should just start doing it. I'll look forward to writing future posts about my opinions on making and shaping dough, cooked vs. non-cooked sauces, cheese varieties and quantities, and the mother lode of all home pizza making opinions: oven temperature and apparati.

Stay tuned for more pizza posts. In the mean time, go buy some supplies and have a go! Good luck.

Stellar Dunkin'

I was moved to write a Yelp review for a particularly good Dunkin' Donuts (767 Cromwell Avenue, Rocky Hill, CT). It's not normal to feel moved to review a more-or-less gross fast food place, so I thought I'd keep the review here for posterity.

Stopped here unexpectedly to give a break to a car-sick-feeling 6-year-old on a road trip. The 6-year-old sickling and his 2-year-old brother marched in to find the staff up on ladders hanging Christmasy stuff. The older boy had spent the last hour or so of our road trip confusing Connecticut and Canada. He declared loudly for all to hear: "I love Dunkin' Donuts! I've never been to a Dunkin' Donuts in Canada!" I ordered a bagel and cream cheese, which the staff had to lightly dance around ladders to accommodate. But they did it quickly and with friendly courtesy. I brought the bagel back to the kids and was confused to see a man approaching the table with two small bags. He held the bags up, looked at me with questioning eyebrows, and glanced at the kids. I assumed it was somebody else's order being misdelivered to our table, but when I asked what it was, he just said, "donuts." I thanked him, told the boys of his kindness, and explained that we'd save them for later. They shared them as dessert after we had reached our destination. The staff continued hanging Christmasy stuff and a customer, a man I had noticed writing copious notes onto paper cards, stood up to offer his advice. "Hang it a little imperfectly. It's always better if it's a little imperfect." He waited for the man on the ladder to string the corporate festivity a little to the left and a little to the right, before declaring, clearly sharing in the pride that exudes from many aspects of this Dunkin' Donuts: "That's it. Perfect."

Not A Morning Person

For most of my life, I have borrowed hours from the late night and early morning, paying off the debt by either sleeping lavishly through the day, or coping with the zombie-making effects of sleep deprivation. Lured in by the (probably false) promise that endless, quiet hours of darkness and solitude will pay dividends in productivity gains, I have often struggled to complete "just one more thing" with whatever project has my attention, while also eyeing the clock at best, or the sunrise at worst, with anxious concern that I shouldn't be too aberrant in my defiance of sleep.

In short: I am not a morning person. I am "blessed" with that gift of waking that more or less makes it easy for me to press on, oblivious to the usual drowsiness that seems to coax most normal people to bed. On the whole, this has worked out okay for me in spite of the occasional job or class in school that required me to be up and at attention bright and early. Sleeping from 3AM to 6AM was not a big deal, especially if I could "catch up" on the weekends. I was younger then, and being in possession of a very long candle, it seemed only natural to burn it at both ends.

Now I'm older, and some things have changed. I have two kids who, whether they are in fact morning people or not, nonetheless rise between 6AM and 7AM most days. My older son Henry also attends morning school with morning teachers who expect morning children to be in their morning desks by 8:15. And my wife is not particularly a morning person either. I can tell, because she grumbles as I do, waking up each morning to dance this groggy dance. If only one of us were a morning person, they could embrace that natural tendency with pride and honor while the other snoozed on…

But no, we both get up every day. Solidarity. And I still fight that urge to stay up all night, but these days I've trained myself to sometimes get to bed by 12 midnight, and almost always by 1AM. That's still considered late by many of my morning, or morning adapted, friends, but to me it represents a great, great adjustment.

Not being a morning person, I've always scheduled appointments, be they with dentists, auto mechanics, friends, business colleagues, whatever the purpose, in the afternoon. The afternoon is so forgiving of non-morning people. I even tend to schedule lunches for the afternoon. Old habits die hard, and it wasn't long ago that getting out of bed, bathed, and transmitted from my home by noon was a pretty tall order. So by default when asked to pick a time to meet for any purpose, I'd say "How about 1 or 2?"

I continued to favor afternoon bookings even through several years of parenthood. Yes, I was waking up at 6 or 7 in the morning, but afraid out of habit to schedule anything earlier than noon. Lately I've literally surprised myself by finally adapting to my new lifestyle. When the internet company asked what time I'd like my service installed, I said "as early in the morning as possible," wanting to get it taken care of so that the rest of my day would be free. I took the car in to be serviced at 8:30AM because, anticipating a lengthy delay, I wanted to "beat the crowd." And when I make regular phone calls to schedule services or to follow up on a bill, I'm often calling the very minute they've started their business day. Perhaps I'm their first caller, because you know, I'm one of those weird morning guys.

Wait, am I really? After all this time, I'm finally broken? Not really. I'm not a morning person, because left to my own druthers I would still work and play long into the night, sleeping most if not all AM hours away. I'd be a "night owl," and I'd love it. But I'm living s a morning person, and it's all right. It has its drawbacks, oh god does it have its drawbacks, but I have to admit it also has its perks.

Tis The Season