Day two

I'm still feeling the aftermath of my purse nabbing incident. Today I spent the morning making phone calls to try to sort out this mess. After calling the dealers and being told that it was going to cost at least $1265 to replace my locks and get a new alarm, I thought of the most ghetto thing to do and called my local Walmart to see if they had the Club. I bet the younger generation doesn't even know what the club is.

The Club

Just in case you're curious.

Unfortunately, my local WalMart does not carry the Club but they had the Masterlock for just 19.99. Meanwhile I'm holding out hope that the thief ditched my bag and some good Samaritan will turn in my keys. I've decided to borrow my friends club for a few days but will probably end up getting the Club from Kragen. My local Kragen is closer than Walmart and has the original Club. Ooooo.

Ok so the whole point of this blog is not to talk about theft, car alarms and Clubs. I wanted to talk about my obsession with food. Currently on the menu is pizza pizza pizza.

Who doesn't love pizza? According to Wiki answers, the average American eats 834 slices of pizza a year and according to Yahoo.answers, the average American consumes about 23 pounds of pizza per year. That is a whole lot of pizza.

My obsession for pizza started about two months ago. I used to live in a city that was mildly obsessed with pizza chains such as Papa Johns and Dominos, receiving about one or two ads a week in the mail. I recently moved to a city that sends me (on average) about 10 different pizza ads a week. I got to thinking how cheap could I make my pizza and how much better could it be compared to these chains? (not to mention healthier)

I knew the first and most important thing to perfect pizza was the crust. Of course everyone is particular about what type of crust they prefer. Who's a fan of thin crust, who loves deep dish, New York style or Chicago! I decided that I would start with the thin crust because it seemed like the easiest style to go with and it meant I wouldn't have to buy any special deep dish pans.

Although I have made pizza in the past, I always had a problem with either the crust not crisping up or uncooked pizza dough in the center of the pizza. I knew that the fancy Italian pizza ovens could heat up to 900+ degrees and conventional ovens in the US only heat up to 500 degrees so there in lied the problem. I really wanted gourmet Italian styled pizza with a thin and crisp crust.

I started out with buying the pizza dough from my local Trader Joe's. They have a nice selection of gourmet foods at reasonable prices. Their pizza dough is wrapped in a bag and comes in regular and spinach. I prefer the regular for pizza and the spinach for bread sticks. One bag of pizza dough is enough for a large pizza and is under 2 dollars. The instructions say to roll out the dough and put your toppings directly onto the pizza and stick it in the oven for 8-10 minutes. This will almost always end up with a soggy or uncooked crust. The trick is to lay out your dough onto a cookie sheet and put it into a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes first. Also, it's important to poke holes in your dough with a fork to let the air through so that you don't end up with big bubbles on your crust. After the dough is cooked but not golden brown, you're ready to top your crust. Does everyone remember Boboli? I based this idea off the Boboli concept. It looks like they are still in business but I don't see their commercials anymore.

Boboli

Ok so here's the next best thing about making super tasty pizza; it's in the sauce and I don't mean Prego. I'm sorry but it's NOT in there. I found this recipe for pizza sauce on the Almighty allrecipes.com:

It's truly exquisite.
Pizza Sauce

I omit the hot pepper flakes and cayenne pepper but for those of you who like it spicy you can follow the recipe to a tee. The anchovy paste says optional but I think it is a must, and a little bit goes a long way. If you can't find the paste, you can get a can of fillets and just use one. The fillets fall apart easily so there's no reason to chop it up. A whole can will only cost you a dollar and there are probably about 6-8 fillets in a can. I also use less honey. I recommend about 1 tablespoon of honey since 2 tablespoons is a little sweet for my taste. You can also double the recipe and save it in your freezer for next time. It's also a great dipping sauce for garlic bread!

Once you've spooned a thin layer of sauce (you don't want to drench it with sauce because that's another reason why pizza crusts end up soggy), next comes the cheese. Many pizza novices will put the veggies and meat next and the cheese on top but by putting the high moisture toppings such as tomatoes on top, it will allow them to cook better and keep the crust dry.

Once you've topped your pizza, the next step is tending to the edges of the crust. Brush the edges with olive oil and sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese on the edges. This will give it a more polished look. The olive oil will help the cheese stick to it and give it a nice golden color. Now you're ready to toss it into the oven until the cheese starts to bubble and the crust is a nice golden color. 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

If you decide to go with fresh mozzarella cheese, I recommend squeezing some of the water out and leaving it in the oven a little longer for about 10-15 minutes.

Here's a picture of the half and half yukon gold potatoes and tomato-salami-onion-olive pizza I made 2 days ago.



I'll write more on my experiment with making homemade dough and using the pizza stone next time.