Pizza party! In pictures! 31 March 2009 3:23 pm
Posted by Tracy in : baking,cooking,geekery,pictures,pizza,school , trackbackToday I was hoping to finish and post a piece about why I should not have gone to my friendly neighborhood Fairway to research foods marketed to kids for my nutrition class, but my brain is still too fried from writing the assignment. On Sunday night, Peter joked that I was going all “Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu” — and that was well before he beat me to bed by two hours because I could not stop writing stuff like “this product is sold less by health and more by cuteness, with stuff like whole grains and sensible solutions sort of afterthoughts, maybe for people who need to justify the purchases to themselves” and
Why does milk drinking have to be made more fun? Leaving aside the whole “milk is for babies” issue, and that for all the conventional wisdom — I mean, marketing hype — about how kids can’t grow big and strong without milk or whatever, can’t a glass of milk just be a glass of milk anymore?
You get the idea. Also, I love that Onion article so hard. But not as much as I love pizza! Check it out:
Aw, yeah. Homemade pizza was my go-to sure-fire way to impress people with my mad kitchen skills long before I turned food professional — for a while, I made it every time I visited Peter’s parents (Peter’s visits to my folks always featured a juggling show). It didn’t take long for my parents to get Tracy pizza envy, and the “visits = pizza” program expanded, until eventually I got sort of burned out on it, but by that point my culinary repertoire had grown to the point where I had plenty of other ways of showing off. So I hadn’t made pizza in quite a while when I got the urge a few weeks ago, but I’m happy to report: Pizza making. I still got it.
These pizzas were based on my basic part whole wheat dough recipe, which I pre-bake just a bit before adding toppings. There’s no fancy equipment, although I did get clever with preheating baking pans and turning them upside down so I could slide pies without using a peel, which I don’t have. I also still want a pizza stone, especially after using one for wildly successful calzones for a Wednesday night dinner at Greg’s, but it’s good to know that I can still throw down even without the fancy gear. But. Back to the pizzas. I am particularly proud of these before-and-after-baking pictures:
In particular, the “before” picture shows off slices of house-brand fresh mozzerella from the previously-mentioned friendly local Fairway. (By the way, I am happy to report that it is very tasty indeed, and for something like 50 cents more a pound compared to packaged mozz, I am definitely going to consider using the fresh stuff whenever I don’t need shredded cheese. Also, I might experiment with putting the fresh mozz in the freezer for firming-up purposes, in case that makes it shreddable, because NOM.) The other pizzas were mushroom-and-onion, and just plain fresh mozzerella on tomato sauce. This one was topped with all the leftovers, and since it was the last pizza I baked up, it was also the one I had time to document, photo-style.
In conclusion, it’s hard to ever call pizza-making spontaneous, what with having to make and rise the dough ahead of time, but this little party was about as close to spur-of-the-moment as it could get, and it was great. Yay for pizza!
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CHA CHA CHA
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Debbie
