I made you a sad little holiday pizza and you're gonna love it.

For Christmas, I made you a sad little pizza. It's for your enjoyment and amusement even if you don’t celebrate the day. Yay!
 
Digging in the freezer, I found a dough ball that never should have been frozen. While I was in there, I also ferreted out some mystery sauce.
 
Up in the cheese drawer, some un-fresh fresh mozzarella was looking for a home, and some very fresh aged mozzarella was in no hurry to be used.
 
 
So I made the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree of pizzas.
 
It was an unfortunate little pizza.
 
It wouldn’t have won a prize at a pizza cook-off.
 
But I’ve already eaten half of it.

​As I write this, I’m trying to not eat the other half.

ABOVE: An actual photo of the actual pizza under discussion. It was a problem child. But that's not its fault. It was a product of its environment. Nurture, not nature. 
 
 
If you’re new here, you have no idea what I’m getting at.
 
Even if you’re not new, you might be confused.
 
We have a motto here at Free The Pizza: "We do these things so you don’t have to."
 
That includes experimenting with things that are “wrong.”

The wrong ingredient.

The wrong procedure.

The wrong handling.

The wrong topping combination.

 
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
 
In this case, the dough (which contained no oil) was too wet to be frozen, resulting in a damaged gluten network. It was also intended for a pan pizza and not a traditional, on-the-deck pie.

The sauce was a mystery if a calculated risk. Nothing in my freezer is toxic. (Yay!) But I also didn't spread it on the pizza. I just splooshed it in dollops on top of the cheese.

The cheeses were OK. I pinched off chunks of the fresh-in-name-only mozzarella and (surprise!) some of it rolled off when I launched the pizza. I got it back on the pizza as best I could. That's why there's a weird little crusty cheesy droopy frico thing happening on the edge. 

ABOVE: The half of the pizza that's left in all its ugly, cheesy goodness. Despite its problem-child status, it still outshines a lot of commercially available pizzas near you. 


But hey, we do it wrong so you don’t have to wonder what’s going to happen if you end up doing it wrong.
 
And at some point, you will do something wrong anyway.
 
It just doesn’t matter. 
 
That’s just our little gift to you.
 
We often show you what will happen if you do it wrong as a way to know that no matter how badly you do it, nobody will laugh at you, and it will not make you puke. 
 
I'll say it again: It just doesn't matter.

However you do it, even if the pizza seems diabolically wrong, it will probably still make you happy. It's just the biochemistry of a pizza-induced dopamine rush. 


I can literally think of only one pizza I have thrown away in the last couple of years.

It was the Thanksgiving leftover turkey experiment with gravy as the sauce, topped with turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mozzarella and Romano. 

Bad idea. Diabolically wrong. No reason to eat it. 

You will probably never do anything so wrong. 

I do it so you don't have to--and I can provide informed warning. 
 
And if you’ve done it wrong and want to share your tale of woe with us—especially if you share it with glee—we are all for it.
 
Bring it on!

ABOVE: The Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza of 2022. It mainly went into the trash. You're welcome. 


Speaking of doing it wrong, here’s a little parallel trivia about that perennial holiday special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
 
That animated children’s TV special was done “all wrong.”
 
It was produced in 1965. Back then, an animated 25-minute show like that took many, many months to produce.

Today, an episode of South Park can be cranked out in a week—yet that show is also so “wrong” for so many hilarious reasons.

But I digress.
 
 
When the executives at CBS saw what they were supposed to put on the air, they knew it was going to tank.
 
It was boring.

It was slow.

It looked primitive.
 
The Vince Guaraldi jazz soundtrack was not exciting or <gasp!> normal.
 
The child characters were all voiced by actual children.
 
Nobody was going to like it.

 
It was garbage.
 
But what could they do? It was too late to get anything to show in its stead.

In today’s dollars, that show had cost a million bucks.
 
The only option was to put it on the air.
 
So they did.
 
And as you know, their holiday TV show done wrong became a ratings monster beloved by generations of kids and parents.
 
 
They did it wrong, and people loved it.
 
Pizza is not as big a deal nor nearly as expensive.
 
The pizza I made probably cost about three bucks.
 
And in the context of A Charlie Brown Christmas, my pizza is Charlie Brown’s iconic, scraggly stick of a Christmas Tree.
 
But it still works.
 
I took this mangy, messy looking pizza made wrong, drizzled it with some good olive oil and sprinkled it with some dried oregano, took a bite, and you know what?
 
 
It tastes pretty good.
 
It’s not going to win any awards.
 
But it’s going to make someone happy.
 
All this to say once again…
 

ABOVE: Oops! Ugly delicious? 

​ 
I do things wrong on purpose as my gift to you.
 
And surprise: the easiest mistakes are never awful.
 
Sometimes, like today, it’s messy and not picture perfect. But it’s always edible and even enjoyable.
 
Pizza dough is pretty forgiving.
 
As long as you’re following best practices with regard to fermentation and high heat, everything else is just stuff.

 
This is the last Saturday Afternoon Pizza Post of 2025.
 
We’re going to be dark next week, and we’ll be back in 2026.
 
Here’s to making big, flavorful pizza mistakes in the New Year!

Free The Pizza!

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Not getting that pizza oven this holiday? Well, you don't need it--and you probably don't even want it anyway, at least not yet. It's much easier to start by making pizza in your home oven. I endorse baking pizza on steel. But if you need to do it on the cheap, you can start with a big, upside-down cast-iron skillet and my silly little book:  Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have. When you’re just starting out, it’s much easier and more productive to learn about pizza in a way that demystifies everybody’s favorite food—including the flying in the face of the belief that great pizza is possible only with a special oven. Speaking as a guy who has two portable pizza ovens sitting in a shed, and who used to have a 1,200-pound wood-fired oven in the kitchen, the best oven on which to learn pizza is a regular home oven with a few simple tools. And the Free The Pizza book is designed specifically to take a newbie from zero to pizza in as short a time is possible. It’s also a lot more fun than the heartbreak of a tiny, cruel oven in the yard. Want to make a pizza at home? Homemade pizza success happens with Free The Pizza at Amazon. ​