I have to laugh at the pizza commercial that says their frozen pizza is as good as delivery pizza.

Uh.  Right.

I made hand-spun pizza for years.  I made a hellava lot of pizzas for delivery.  Not one of them was half as good as having that pie delivered to your table right out of the oven.  It’s great marketing that can convince someone that a mediocre product is as good as a mediocre product – and get them to buy it.

I’ve had a few frozen pizzas in my time that were reasonably good – for a frozen pizza – but nothing compares to a fresh-made and fresh-baked pizza.

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s snowing back here today.  A perfect excuse to turn on the oven and bake a fresh pizza.

This was a team effort.  Victor made the dough and the sauce, I put it together and baked it.  We work well in the kitchen together.

We have a couple of pizza dough recipes we use.  Today was BH&G New Cook Book. (Well…  it was new in 1981 when Victor got it…)

Pizza Dough

  • 1 1/2 cups warm water (100º to 105º)
  • 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
  • 4 cups “00” flour or unbleached all-purpose flour plus more for dusting
  • 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
  • olive oil for bowl

Sprinkle yeast over warm water in bowl of mixer fitted with dough hook. Let proof about 5 minutes.

Mix together flour and salt. Add to yeast mixture. Mix on low speed about 4 minutes or until dough forms a coarse ball. Stop mixer and cover bowl with a towel. Let dough rest about 5 minutes, then remove towel and continue mixing another 2 minutes or so.

Lightly oil a large bowl. Form dough into a ball, transfer to bowl and turn to lightly coat with oil. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes, then refrigerate overnight.

Punch down dough, re-roll, and return to bowl. Tightly cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or up to 24 hours.

Divide dough into 2 pieces; shape pieces into balls and place on a lightly floured work surface. Loosely cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rise at warm room temperature until doubled, about 2 hours.

The pizza sauce was simply a can of tomato sauce, a splash of red wine, garlic, Greek oregano, salt, and pepper.

I topped it with cheese and homemade Italian sausage.

It was the exact size of the pizza stone.  Luck or skill?  If you voted luck, you would be right.

Pizza for lunch was just what the weatherman ordered, since it’s been snowing now for about 20 hours non-stop – with more to come.

A good dinner tonight and another loaf of fresh bread tomorrow.

I love this weather!