After a day of juggling parents and a baby in the hot sun, I decided to do something for myself: make pizza. Sure, other people ate it, and said various things about it. But, who cares what they think? At this point in my pizza-making journey, the process is therapeutic self-exploration; introverted, not extroverted. Especially after a long day of juggling a maniacal child, I needed to work some dough and fire up the oven to 500, despite the sweltering heat outside. Like standing by the grill, basking in the flame with a cold beer in your hand. It puts back into you, what the day took outta you.   This one is plain cheese and scallions (a little heavy on the sauce, just as Karen likes it).  I fixed it first, to please the plain and simple pizza lover that lives in each of us. After that, it was all about me.

The second pizza featured red sauce, turnip greens sauteed with garlic, scallions again, and Trader Joe’s brand Italian seasoned soy sausage. Both pies got hit with some grated parm. The second one got some truffle oil drizzling and crushed red pepper. The spicy greens were perfect with the soysage. If it sounds weird, blame Victory Farms CSA for putting bags of the stuff in front of me as a challenge to figure out how to incorporate them into a meal (my turnip greens and chick pea soup didn’t turn out that well).

I brushed the edges with olive oil, but they didn’t get golden and bubbly like I wanted. In fact, I’m trying to figure out exactly how to ensure that I get a crunchy bottom to my crust every time. It seems like my thin crust pizzas get soggi-fied by too much sauce/cheese. I may have to try not to stretch them so wide. Alton Brown says he never throws a pizza wider than 12 inches. Maybe that’s the key. The bottom can get scalded while the top melds with the toppings. I dunno. There’s nothing tastier than the journey to pizza perfection.

If you can’t take the heat, get into the kitchen.

The swings at John B. Cary are perfect for Jasper, even when he’s riding backwards. He cackles all the way out and back and kicks his feet with glee. Then, he cries all the way home in the stroller until one of us carries him. Did I mention we’re looking for a babysitter?

When I called Karen at the mall and asked her what to do with Jasper next (he was verging on fussy), her suggestion sounded feasible: fill the kiddie pool in the back and let him cool off. Well, it took me four tries to get the water to a temperature that Jasper would tolerate (the first three times, he screamed and cried. It was pretty cold outta the hose. I kept adding big pots of hot water from the tap in the kitchen. Then boiling water from the stove. Finally, the stuff was as warm as bathwater and he got in…

…but only after Frankie showed him that there was nothing to be afraid of. Once the little guy got comfy, he was a terror with the splashins.

I hope everyone had at least one moment like this one during the weekend. Maybe you didn’t splash in a pool. Maybe you belted out some kareoke, or danced to some radio song while making your smoothee, or jumped up and down on the bed, dug around in the garden while listening to WRIR (my ecstatic moment). It just seems like the weekend is so hectic with things I couldn’t get done during the week, I’ve got to live it up and throw down in one way or another.

I didn’t plan to do a fourth installment of my adventures in pizza baking until I’d found some saltillo tiles, but it’s become such a hot topic whenever I see Matt, I thought I’d use my blog to update him (and you). The problem that Matt confessed to me is getting the decorated pizza dough to slide off the pizza peel and onto the pizza stone. When it doesn’t slide off, the dough bunches up, toppings go everywhere, and the frustration is enough to drive the cook to drink. So, what’s the answer? I’ll start with a couple of my good/bad techniques and my next pizza gadget purchase (help me decide, please).

If I don’t learn how to get more food in focus, I’ll never make it onto Tastespotting.com

On Saturday, I baked two pizzas, per Karen’s request. The first one (pictured) slid off of my rimless cookie sheet without any problem. For months, I’ve been having nightmarish problems when I’d flour my makeshift peel only to have the thin pizza dough soaking up the flour and clinging to the pan. More flour is not an acceptable answer. It cakes up on the bottom of the pizza and ruins the snap of the crust and you get flour on your tongue with each bite. I’m guessing the same thing is happening to Matt. I suggested that he switch to corn meal, as I’d read somewhere. Of course, when I did this, I grabbed polenta corn-grits, and they proved just that: gritty. The little pebbles turned to rocks on the bottom of my crust and I couldn’t really eat them. This weekend, I went with the masa harina cornmeal that I use to make tortillas. It worked well, but you could kinda taste the mexican-ness. Besides that, the unorthodox pie was awesome, decadent, satisfying.

Brie and asparagus pizza (the brie IS the sauce).

On the second pizza, I went with a red sauce, instead of triple-cream brie and sauteed the asparagus a little to make sure it cooked through while the pizza baked. The results were not suitable to be photographed. It was carnage. A five car pile-up. It seems that the effectiveness of the corn meal made me a little cocky and I didn’t use enough. When I stuck the peel into the oven and gave it a few jerks to get the pizza to release and slide onto the scalding hot pizza stone… well, things went wrong. It’s hard to talk bout it, actually. My mind may have blocked out some of the details due to the trauma. I’ll have psychic scars where that pizza memory should have been. It wasn’t the first time it’s happened though. Common to these minor catastrophes are; cursing and clattering of pans, the sizzle of wet ingredients (instead of dough) hitting a 500 degree rock, steam escaping from the oven (and my ears), grunts and guffaws of frustration, and a miserable pizza-mess eating experience. What do you expect when your food-baby is torn apart before your very eyes?

When I make six pizza dough balls, every meal somehow must become a pizza (the little pools are olive oil drizzled at the end).

One of my difficulties comes from the olive oil. I paint the outer ridge of the dough with oil to get it to bubble and crunch and turn golden brown. Sometimes the oil gets under the dough and ruins the dry sliding surface of the peel. Another problem is time. The longer the pizza sits on the peel, the more flour/cornmeal it soaks up and then the dough and peel become one. Being a perfectionist stress-case in the kitchen, I’m painfully slow about piling on my ingredients, and rushing just raises my blood pressure. Which brings me to another point. The more ingredients I put on, the heavier the pizza is, and then it’s sure to stick. Luckily, I usually make thin and simple pizzas, so they’re light. But, thin pizzas mean that the dough is stretched, exposing more of the wetter interior of the dough and thus needing more flour.

Does this sound like a cluster-f*ck? I mean, especially when you consider my tireless pursuit of pizza perfection? It’s no wonder my muse is committing sapuku on the way to the alter. Well, there is no beast that can’t be tamed. Since I’ve already caved in and resolved to cook on a Bed Bath and Beyond pizza stone, now it’s time to go ahead and buy a real pizza peel. Amazon has led me to one by Epicurean that is about as sexy as a peel can be. It’s made from recycled wood products, dishwasher safe, virtually non-stick (or so they say), and impervious to knives and pizza cutters. I covet this item, but rue it’s price. The other contender is the Super Peel. How it works is kinda mysterious (see the videos on the site), but they sure know how to talk shop. Among other attributes, the Super Peel promises, “Less Physical Effort and Emotional Stress.” Finally, a pizza peel that understands me. Here’s a site that takes on the debate between the two products. Between ebay and Amazon, the two are identically priced (including shipping).

Do any of you want to weigh in on this? If you’ve got something other than one of these two (in other words, an inferior product) your suggestions may be greeted with skepticism. Otherwise, all suggestions are welcome.

I have a confession to make. Since publishing the results of my “Home Depot” pizza story, I’ve had to go back to the drawing board. As you may recall, the whole point was to circumvent the trap of gourmet store’s overpriced pizza stones and find a cheap alternative that would do just as well. I’ve kept you in the dark about the past two months of drama. I’ve had to go back to the drawing board three times, reached some humbling conclusions, made some great pizzas, and now find myself totally unsure of anything I’ve allegedly learned. I guess I should probably bring you up to speed.

Red onion and sausage (GimmeLean brand fake stuff – delicious)
on the Home Depot red brick slab

At first, it seemed like I’d done my homework, cuz the pizza came out fine using a tile from Lowes as my pizza stone. Sure, there was a slight stuffiness in my house from running the oven with a big rock in it, but I figured that would dissipate with time – maybe part of the seasoning/curing process. Karen kept any critical comments to herself, cuz she didn’t want to rain on my parade. A couple days later, I was using the leftover dough to make calzones. They came out awesome (but the pictures didn’t, so you never heard about’em). Loaded with veggies and 3-4 kinds of fake meat, and weighing at least a couple pounds each, they’d have brought in big bucks on the Grace Street corridor.

However, this time around, I noticed a crack formed in my tile (makeshift pizza stone). Also, Karen and I both couldn’t ignore the chemical smell in the air. So, the stone went out to the alley and into the supercan and I set out on another hunt. This time, I went to an actual Home Depot instead of a Lowes and brought home a virtually identical stone. Having selected it using the same Flintstonian process of elimination (it didn’t look glazed), I may have actually picked the same brand, make, model (but it said, “natural” on it! probably referred to the color. doh!)

The next experiment was like an instant replay: Beautiful pizza, terrible smell, and a trip to the supercan. After looking online and seeing that others had sought out smaller “quarry” tiles (mine were 18″x18) at local tile specialty stores, I poked my head into Best Tile on Broad Street. When I asked for an unglazed and untreated tile, they acted like I was crazy. When I told them I wanted to cook with it, they acted like I was from Mars. Moving right along then. About the smaller tiles, I asked Sketchy, a local blogging baker, about this and he said Home Depot had them. When I asked if they slide around in his oven during use, he said that he always puts parchment paper down, and that makes everything easier (mental note).

Same pizza, out of the oven, with especially bad lighting
(it’s light on cheese, cuz we ran out and I refused to add cheddar – but you can really get into the crust if it’s not over-cheesed).

Back at Home Depot, I actually got up the courage to inquire with the staff. “Quarry tiles? Never heard of’em” They didn’t think they had anything that would work. (next time don’t mention the cooking/pizza part). Then on my way out, I noticed 16×16 red brick walkway stones. They were 2″ thick and weighed 39lbs each. Hey, brick ovens are supposed to make great pizza, right? For $3.99, why not? I even stopped by Mary Angela’s and picked up a large dough ball for $2.50, saving myself some work.

Back at the house, it was deja vu all over again. Only this time, I got a headache from the fumes and I’m pretty sure Karen had had enough of my subjecting the baby to this questionable air quality (although we were both crazy about the chewy crust on the pizza (thanks Mary Angelas). With a little effort, the red brick was heaved out the door. At this point, Karen points out the obvious, “How much have you spent so far? Couldn’t you have just bought a pizza stone for that?” I’d spent almost $20, and yes, that’s how much they cost at Bed Bath and Beyond, but those models are crap and they’ll crack over time (according to the discussion forums). I wanted something equivalent to the high end pizza stones and I wanted to pay pennies on the dollar. Plus, I’m doing this for yall! My loss is your gain (if I actually find a suitable alternative).

Peeking at the crust told me that it was gonna be chewy. I was going for crispy, so I put half of it back in and got that distinct twice cooked sensation you get with pizza sold by the slice – but it did crunch.

My next stop took me to Southern States. I was looking for a huge piece of terra cotta. Someone online said they’d just flipped a 16″ base over and used the flat bottom of it. Well, they had one that size, but it had a ridge on the outside and some other grooves that would have gotten in the way. Plus, it was $14.99.

Gang, you’re gonna be so disappointed in me. You know where I went next? Bed Bath and Beyond. Dammit, I just wanna make good (and safe to eat) pizza at this point. To heck with an industrial strength stone. To heck with the irresistible bargain hunt fueled by self-righteous principles and a touch of OCD. I read right up to the recipes section of this amazing book about the search for the perfect pizza. Reinhart’s search is over and mine won’t begin until I have a rock in my oven to burn the bottom of my pizza. So, I cheated. But, I’m not satisfied yet and I haven’t given up. There must be a way to hearth your home oven from hardware store products. If you stay tuned for the third installment, you’ll find me further confounded, but still hot on the trail of this mystery. You’ll also find recipes for Napolitana pizza dough and… some really fantastic breakfast pizzas. See you on the flip side.

This is the box for the 15×14 stone, by Oneida from Bed Bath and Bleccchttt! (it’s really an awful store). On Amazon, it’s basically this one or this one (one of them will be cheaper and offers free shipping).