TKO! Homemade Pizza

No KitchenAid... no Cuisinart... nothing but elbow grease, and we made outstanding homemade pizza! This experience doesn’t push me either direction in terms of whether or not I want a stand mixer, but it certainly makes me feel foolish for eating pizza out or having it delivered for years. Seriously, what was I waiting for?

The recipe for the pizza crust, from the Patricia Wells’ Trattoria cookbook, was recommended to me by my culinary mentor and inspiration, Alison. Not only is she the most accomplished home cook you’ll ever meet, but she’s also been a personal chef and caterer. Dinner and a bottle of wine in her gorgeous kitchen (which they renovated themselves, down to custom-designed, home-built cabinetry) is truly one of life’s greatest pleasures. No restaurant experience can compare.

Until I started this blog, I always thought I was a somewhat lazy, mediocre cook because the benchmark against which I measured myself was Alison. Now I realize that I’m pretty good and log a decent amount of hours in the kitchen, and that she’s amazing and cooks constantly!

This is an overnight dough, which gives the yeast a chance to ferment and the crust more flavor. It was very easy, if not a little dry, and only required five minutes of kneading. Ben and I took turns and made a double batch (which netted enough dough for six 12-inch pizzas), and it was not too tricky. It rises overnight in the fridge, then rolls and stretches out easily. Sophia and I put the pizzas together, so we didn’t try too hard to achieve any kind of symmetry, but they were beautiful in a rustic, amoeba-shaped sort of way. They slid beautifully off the cornmeal-covered pizza peel onto the preheated pizza stone and were perfectly crisp in 10 minutes.

For sauce, I found a recipe from Gourmet magazine on epicurious—you just simmer crushed tomatoes and olive oil for about 20 minutes. Easy as can be and remarkably flavorful. As for toppings, we chose pitted Kalamata olives, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and a spicy Italian salami, called calabrese, made by Volpi on The Hill in St. Louis. The result was perfect, perfect, perfect! In fact, after just one bite, Sophia turned to me and yelled: “Five stars! Five stars? Definitely five stars!”

We often go to a fabulous local restaurant, Proto’s Pizza, on Friday nights for their happy hour specials on Neapolitan-style pizza. This is no cheesy pizzeria, but high-end thin-crust pizza made with the highest-quality ingredients. There are countless reasons to continue to go there—the affordable happy hour wine, the delicious salads, the big glass window where the kids can stand and watch the pizza guys at work. Not to be too arrogant on my first attempt, but our pizza was just as memorable and satisfying as the pizza at Proto’s, at about an 80% discount! In fact, our most expensive ingredient was the fresh basil, and that problem will be rectified once we’re past our last hard frost and can get some organic basil growing on the back deck.

I froze all of our leftover dough and am going to try thawing some on the counter tomorrow to make another batch tomorrow night. Alison swears by making a quadruple batch (in her KitchenAid Professional 600 stand mixer, of course) and freezing the bulk of it for future dinners. While it takes a bit more advance planning than picking up the phone and ordering in 40 minutes before you want to eat, the result was so superior to any delivery available here, and so affordable, that I think the local pizzerias have lost our business for good!

As a testament to our commitment, the pizza peel, previously relegated to a hook in the storage room, was rehung this morning in a place of prominence on the dining room wall. A sign of more good things to come!