A Little Kitchen Pizzapalooza struck the other night. It started with an industrial sized jar of yeast that's been in the fridge for months now, convinced it had outlived its shelf life when I'd set some pizza dough to rise last week and nothing happened. I proofed it one more time just to be sure, before tossing it and sure enough it foamed and ended up rising like the dead. Before I knew what was happening I had 3 bowls of dough set to rise, testing various locations (fridge, oven, stove-top dutch oven) for optimal rising conditions. In an attempt to venture out of my Asparagus Pizza comfort zone I revisited this White Pizza with Mushrooms and Broccoli. This was the pizza that actually started it all. Once upon a time I was at the library perusing a copy of Vegetarian Times, why? I really don't know, but the picture looked really good and with a stop at my local produce market I had it on the table that very same night and it was wonderful, a bechamel based bliss! Next thing I knew, I was all about pizza, I went off on an ADD tangent and ventured off in search of the Next Best Thing. I found it.
Shaved Asparagus Pizza came in to my life. Smitten Kitchen mentioned pizza stone in the post so I went out and bought a pizza stone. The old lady who sold it to me asked "Do you use '00' pizza flour?" uhmnn no..."Oh! you must try it, it's what all the gourmet pizza shops use" uhmnnn.... ok. I found it in bulk at Rainbow and have produced some pretty awesome crispy crust pizzas that rock and as it turns out the pizza stone is crucial to the crust as well. Sadly I found that out when I broke my pizza stone last week and had to go back to the cookie sheet. Gah! what a waste.
The pizza was ok...totally edible but a complete dud when compared to my previous attempts.
To illustrate, a couple of weeks ago I called on a friend to give me some advice on constructing a shelf in my kitchen. I was looking at having something custom cut to fit into a specific space as opposed to buying something pre-made that might sorta fit. I'm perfectly capable of DIY. Mostly I just wanted a ride to Home Depot and back. I was not attempting any kind of bribe or coersion to get this friend to do my dirty work, it was just a coincidence that I had a pizza in the oven when he showed up with his tape measure. Long story short my custom made and installed shelf (untouched by me) only cost me a pizza.
If I can't seduce with my feminine wiles at least I've got a back-up plan.
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