Whatcha gonna do with leftover pizza dough? In my house, we just make more pizza. Breakfast pizza. Lunch pizza. Seriously. We work at home. If I decide I want lunch pizza, it takes about 10 minutes of active prep to make a pizza. The rest of it—like preheating the oven and warming the dough to room temp—that’s all passive time.
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Oh, boy. Get ready. No pizza today. You might want to leave right now. But if you stay, there will be some pizza ingredients involved. This is really about making something out of almost nothing. No plan. No prep. No nothing, almost. This one's a little like being on a Food Network cooking competition. Except no cameras and no tattoos. What’s an anti-vampire pizza? Please allow me to answer your question with a question: Do you enjoy garlic? This is an easy-to-make pizza. (Recipe follows at the end of this post.) This pizza also sounds very minimalist--enough so that people will say, “That doesn’t sound very interesting." And that’s the beauty of it: nobody sees this pizza coming. When it arrives, they're awestruck at how crazy flavorful it is and their heads spin like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist on meth. (Is that so wrong? It's Halloween!) Yes, it finally happened last night: The Hunt For Pulled Porktober came to an end. Was that end a success or failure? I'll allow you to decide. And by the way, if you were one of the many who wrote, expressing your ongoing joy and delight at witnessing the culinary porcine perversity of the Pulled-Pork Pig Pie Adventure Series Part 1 and Part 2, thank you. It's always nice to know there is a foodie fellow traveler, even if only in spirit and interwebs digits. In our last episode, you'd been left with a pizza that had a great hole torn from the middle. (A metaphor for our times, perhaps?) Yes, I know. While waiting for the results of the pig-pizza prototyping project described last Saturday, you’re wondering how you slept at all this past week. I’m here to tell you: sleep is overrated. All you need is pizza. Also, pulled pork doesn’t hurt. In fact, as I’m writing this, I can taste the pork from this pizza and I want more. And I want it now. Today’s lavishly illustrated second installment of the Pulled-Pork Pig Pie Adventure Series features wild speculation, gelatinized pig broth, pig parts on parade, and what was a piping hot pizza bubbling with promise—despite a giant, weeping wound near the center. (Fear not. It wept with joy for our sins of savory pursuit.) Like most honest pizza mistakes, this project was edible, enjoyable, dazzling and disappointing all at the same time. I’m doing something crazy ridiculous. I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out yet. In the meantime, can I interest you in some used pig parts? As you may know (if you’ve been paying attention here instead of doing something productive and useful), I’ve been on a kick I’m calling “Pizza Like A Local.” That’s an effort to devise more ways to represent your hometown’s signature foods on pizza. Well, yesterday, I was confronted with one of my least favorite pizza toppings: Pulled pork. In an effort to confront this probable porcine beastie pizza, I’ve learned a couple of useful tactics. They include remembering that a) there’s always another way to use a familiar ingredient, b) there are simple tricks that are applicable in places way beyond pizza, and c) you know nothing about what kinda craziness your friends are willing to try. Homemade pizza: just add water, flour, salt, yeast--and fairy dust? How you can make magic happen...9/21/2024 I’ve always tried to let people know that making pizza is not magic. It’s just water, flour, salt and yeast. Have I been wrong all these years? Does pizza actually require magic? Last week, I was in France talking to a career chef who started making wood-fired pizza a little over a year ago. Our pizza conversation meandered to that place where I begin using the F-word. And as silly as the conversation gets, it belies an important quality of pizza that is beyond your control--yet important to grasp. (Don't worry, we will not begin speaking in Zen koans, Grasshopper.) I said to Chef, “There’s something about pizza that is fascinating. Stir up those thoughts of pizza past, my friend. We're in Paris and it’s time to play pizza memories! The great French author Marcel Proust is an icon of food memories and joy. And we’ve been spilling the joy all over our shirts as we eat memorable meals in crowded cafes and bistros across the City Of Light. Today’s stains are duck jus from Rotisserie D’Argent, along with a splattering of a very nice Côtes du Rhône. (As French wines go, Côtes du Rhônes seem to be undervalued in the US and are very affordable as French wines go. Medium-bodied and easy to like, their herbal, earthy and spicy notes play nice with most pizzas. Not that I have an opinion.) There has been no pizza in Paris. Yet. (You know that will change.) Yes, the most popular pizza nationwide is pepperoni. But one day, it will happen. You’ll be hosting a pizza night, and you’ll have to step away from the pepperoni because you’ve done the unthinkable: invited a vegetarian to your dinner table. This is so not a problem, especially with pizza. It just requires that you pack away your pork-product love for an evening and figure out how to walk without your cured-meat crutch. And it helps to start thinking about the flavors a meat lover really loves about meat, and how can you possibly replicate that—or distract from it entirely. What to do? You’re making a great pepperoni pizza at home. That’s done. Now, how do you start branching out and making a pizza nobody has ever made before? Easy. Just figure it out. It’s actually fun. It’s a mental exercise in the behavior of all the components—your dough, its transformation into crust, sauce, cheese, and individual toppings. How do they behave? How is each component determined to undermine your success? Or how does each one wish to cooperate? The unusual pizzas I’ve made this way include the Clam Chowder Pizza, the subsequent Deconstructed Clam Chowder Pizza, the Gumbo Pizza, the Chicken, Shrimp and Andouille Étouffée Pizza, the Shrimp & Garlic Pizza, and a whole series of pizzas with non-traditional toppings that just weren’t very difficult. They were more surprising to people than anything. Are you at all creative and experimental in the kitchen? If so, it doesn’t take long for you to start thinking about what interesting new pizzas you want to create. There’s a game to play here. I’m not sure you’ll want to play along. There is danger ahead. Have you ever considered a pizza with roast pork, or gravied ground beef, or shrimp, or fresh corn, or lobster or oysters? Do those possibilities make you wonder what the hell is wrong with me? Would you believe they’re not my ideas? (Well, not most of them.) Would understanding where these pizza ideas come from lead you to a “crazy-idea pizza” of your own that represents your own stomping grounds? You might be surprised. I hold an unpopular opinion in the world of pizza: the fabled pizza Margherita is overrated. Why am I willing to court potential violence against my person for my public opinion on a controversial subject almost as polarizing as Donald vs. Kamala or boxers vs briefs? Because I’m a glutton for punishment and I haven’t been kicked in the head enough lately. Just kidding. I’ve never been kicked in the head (though I have come close). My opinions about the Margherita are based in both historical fact and personal experience—and there’s an equally traditional pizza that I believe is far better. Papa‘s Tomato Pies: a slice of pizza Americana greatness in world-famous Robbinsville New Jersey8/3/2024 Robbinsville is not on your radar. You’ve never been there. And if you go there, there’s no reason to look at that little shopping center off Main Street and say, “Oh, yeah! There’s some amazing pizza in there!“ But there it is: Papa’s Tomato Pies. Crunchy, crispy, cheese and tomato goodness. And yes, it’s in New Jersey. What was it like the first time you made an actual pizza? We’re not talking a Thomas’s English Muffin pizza, or a Chef Boyardee pizza kit-in-a-box pizza. No Boboli-and-Ragu pizza. We’re talking a from-scratch, kneading-the-dough-yourself pizza baked in your home oven that came out and surprised you by tap dancing on your tongue. What did that pizza taste like? How did it make you feel? Did it change your world even a smidge? Last week, I unleashed upon you a white pizza with clams and bacon. The response has been all kinds of enthusiastic. I had a different response from Peter Reinhart, whose recipe I’d adapted by adding bacon. (He offered a hearty endorsement of the added pork product, by the way. Should you wish to see the original blog post, it is here.) In his reply to my post, Peter said, “I don't know where the aversion to cheese and seafood started.” As often happens (since I’m a contrarian), I’d already been thinking about that fish and dairy “prohibition” for some time. And it suddenly seemed like the right time to blast that seafood and cheese nonsense out of the water. In a fit of pizza panic (which doesn’t happen a lot these days), we produced this pizza that--wow--blew off their socks. We had this pizza yesterday, and will be having it again tomorrow. It's that good. And you should try making this one yourself. As soon as possible, in fact. It requires a little more prep than most pizzas. It’s also a white pizza, which can create pushback among the red-sauce diehards. Ignore that. If you have anything even vaguely resembling an adventurous spirit for food, this is an herby, peppery, savory, salty delight. And there’s bacon involved. It’s Independence Day weekend, and you’re out doing things and not making pizza inside.
I've also considered that you may need some beach reading. So I’m doing something that seems to be totally unrelated to pizza: I’m recommending a comic novel about VampiresInVans.com. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon when it debuted about two weeks ago. The pizza looks fantastic! People love it. Social media friends and fans are lining up to like it! But what’s the real story behind that pretty pepperoni pie? Well… Meh. It’s nothing special. I can do better and so can you—even if you’re a newbie. (In fact, if you’re an old hand, you already know this. Shape has no flavor, and neither does photography.) Too much pizza dough. How does that happen? Dumb mistakes, that’s how. I recently found myself with an extra batch of dough. This did happen during my recent bout with COVID, so you can understand how my thinking processes may have been muddled. That said, I fell upon a solution to deal with all that dough, and I’m going to share it with you. It will be some of the best, easiest bread you’ve ever had. What exactly is a COVID pizza? I think you’re looking at it in the photo above. As some people I know might say, “Dude, that cheese pizza is righteous!” OK, maybe so—until you see the whole thing. You’ll get to see it in just a moment. |
AuthorBlaine Parker is the award-winning author of the bestselling, unusual and amusing how-to pizza book, Free The Pizza. Also known as The Pizza Geek and "Hey, Pizza Man!", Blaine is fanatical about the idea that true, pro-quality pizza can be made at home. His home. Your home. Anyone's home. After 20 years of honing his craft and making pizza in standard consumer ovens across the nation, he's sharing what he's learned with home cooks like you. Are you ready to pizza? Archives
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