It’s not every day I pull off five (nearly) perfect pizzas.
But today, I (nearly) did it!
(There was just the one that didn’t slide smoothly off the pizza peel and turned out looking a bit more like a calzone, but it was still delicious!)
Using the NYT’s pizza dough recipe from Roberta’s pizzeria in Brooklyn, I have yet to make a bad pizza.
I’ve certainly made ugly pizzas, but narry a bad one!
My First Pizzas
Back in January, our Bug asked for pizza for his birthday dinner. He had meant Papa John’s takeout pizza, but since his grandfather was visiting and family friends were joining us, I nixed that idea tout de suite.
I went in whole hog. I ordered a pizza stone and pizza peel on Amazon, and started researching good pizza dough recipes.
I bought 00 flour from a fancy grocery store (turns out Giant has it, too), and made the dough a day in advance and let it rise in the fridge overnight.
On his birthday, we had guests for dinner and I was making a dish I had never made before. I was breaking my mom’s cardinal rule of entertaining: Always serve a dish you’ve made before and know you can make well!
What the hell. The kid wanted pizza.
By some miracle, the dough turned out perfectly. I put together three absolutely delicious pizzas.
Granted, the kitchen looked like it had been hit by a bomb and there was flour EVERYWHERE. But the pizzas were good.
Fast forward to today
I’ve had a few disasters between that first time and now. The fact the pizza turned out so well for the Bug’s birthday must have been beginner’s luck.
Each disaster has been a learning opportunity (don’t overload the pizza!), and almost every time I make it, it gets better.
So I was super proud of the pizza I made today.
Not only that, I was super proud of myself for being so organized that despite there being flour everywhere for the pizza making, cleanup was a breeze.
I’m really getting the hang of this…
Next time the challenge will be to sneak some vegetables onto the boys’ pizza.
