Jerry's pizza

The sweet smell of basil wafted through the spring air like the perfume of a young girl crushing on Christopher Atkins in the '80's.

Indiana Jones Pizza

The secret ingredient in the crust this time is fennel. It is important to have a secret ingredient. Taking the time to add the secret ingredient is a demonstration to the universe that you care about what you are doing, that you are being mindful. So always add a secret ingredient. It doesn't even have to be a closely guarded secret. You don't even have to be able to taste it. You just have to care. That is what makes pizza taste good.

Besides, fennel is a good compliment to spicy italian sausage; which we cut into discs and fried brown. And then there is the yellow pepper I wanted to use up. Same with that mushroom. A bit of onion was chopped fine, more a seasoning than a topping. Tomato slices too. Pizza is my favorite way to use up veggies out of the fridge before they go bad. We tossed a few pepperonis on there too for good measure.

I added some extra flour to the dough, because I am getting tired of fighting with a sticky dough when rolling it out. Turned out well. I practiced my hand tossing for a bit, I was even getting excited about the idea that I could get an entire crust without using the rolling pin. But the dough got stretched thin in the center and I broke a hole in it. All you can do is ball it back up and do it over again with the pin.

We enjoyed this pizza while playing Indiana Jones Life and watching the Last Crusade. Good times.

Leftovers Pizza

After kind of a bad day and a lot on my mind I really needed something to do, keep the brain busy and all that.

Ah ha! Pizza! (plus this gave me lunch leftovers for the week).

I made too much pizza dough (as usual) and had some serious overlap on the pizza tin so I tried the rolled up crust again, not bad. The pizza consisted of some fairly standard ingredients: pepperoni, sauce, black olives, garlic, bacon and onion.

After all the pizza's we've made we have this pretty much down to a science, 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Weeeeeeeel....

With about 2 minutes left to go I decided I had enough time to run across the street to the store and get something to drink, after the day I had I deserved a full-throttle Coke. I got back to discover that my pizza crust was a little overdone - not burnt but definitely a dark brown - so disappointing.

Word of advice: go with your gut and take the pizza out of the oven!

Happy pizza-ing!

A Moving Pizza

Yummmmmm! Tonight's pizza started with buttermilk added to the pizza dough which gave the crust a flakier texture. Next we added our standard tomato sauce complete with a myriad of spices including oregano, Italian seasoning, garlic etc. etc. The extra yummy included onion, black olives, green olives, yellow pepper, orange pepper, bacon, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and a little bit of Parmesan cheese. The extra large crust was rolled up to make a "filled" crust of saucy, cheesy goodness.

After about 25 minutes we pulled from the oven a golden brown, steaming, dreamy concoction of red saucy, olivy, cheesy yumminess.

A very hot mixture that ended up as good as was expected with spicy bites here and garlicy bites there. The best part of homemade pizza, the unexpected combination of spices and toppings that create some of the best pizzas.

Happy pizza-ing!