juicy pizza

Homemade pizza is my security blanket dinner to serve to guests. Just about everyone likes pizza, and I've made it many times. It's pretty hard to ruin if you have a pizza stone or hearth stone. My vice is overloading the pizza with too many toppings and too much sauce. I know an authentic and artful pizza is restrained, even spare, in its composition, but I like the excess of a big, heavily laden piece.

This past weekend we had house guests, and I had all my pizza-making ingredients ready. But we went out to dinner at the sublime Spacca Napoli, and didn't feel like having pizza a second time. (Besides, who wants to be second act to pizza made in a stone oven imported from Naples?) So last night I made a batch of pizza for just Mike and me. I didn't try to make it pretty or round. I never do. I like the rustic look of oval or kidney-shaped pizzas.

Often I use Follow Your Heart soy mozzarella, but our lousy, inadequate Whole Foods was sold out. (Harsh? Maybe, but this Whole Foods has serious problems keeping stuff in stock. Also, it was famously closed down for days by the Department of Health due to rat droppings. It's not exactly a flagship store.) So I used cow's milk mozzarella and soft goat cheese on a couple of pizzas, and made another one cheeseless.







These have red and green pepper, artichoke hearts (the kind you get frozen at Trader Joe's, defrosted and seasoned with a little white wine vinegar), mushrooms, a light sprinkling of kalamata olives, and thick red sauce. I know this is wrong, but I use a simple marinara sauce on pizza. It's just chopped garlic sauteed with a heavy sprinkling of dried or fresh oregano and thyme, black pepper, and red pepper flakes, plus a large can of crushed tomatoes, simmered together for at least twenty minutes. The heavy layers of mushrooms, peppers, and sauce make the pizza relatively juicy. I usually make a crust from bread flour, but this time I used mostly whole wheat flour, and it was delicious and tender, not at all heavy. It may have helped that the dough sat in the refrigerator for five days, giving it plenty of time to ferment or for the enzymes to act, or whatever magic happens to bread dough that sits for days.

This is the same pizza I've made at least a dozen times. Next time I resolve to branch out, but there's something to be said for a big fat overloaded pizza, dripping with sauce.