Pizza

I have made pizza since I was little. My mom first taught me to make it. It was always such a treat to wake up early, start making the dough, get the ingredients together, and then finally roll out the dough and bake the pie. I guess I can see why I love cooking so much now that I'm older. I am NOT a morning person, therefore the fact that I actually ENJOYED getting up early to cook is very interesting. Anyway, originally pizza was only made for special occasions. It was too labor intensive to do otherwise. As time went on, however, it became more and more common. Then for some reason a year or two ago I just stopped. I don't know why. I simply did not make a pizza for what felt like a very long time.

A couple of weeks ago an article came out in the food section of the chronicle about pizza, thus inspiring me to make pizza again. I have been on a pizza binge ever since.

I made pizza last night for dinner. I made two 12" pies. One with a thin layer of pesto, a layer of mozzarella, very thinly sliced zucchini, and then topped with dollops of pesto. The other pie was a very simple tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella with basil. While the toppings of both pies turned out very well, I was painfully reminded of the difficulty that comes with making the crust. The dough I made was good, and it rolled out nicely into two very thin crusted pies. But when I popped them in the ovens they did not cook the way I had wanted them to. They simply didn't get crispy enough. The toppings cooked through, but the crust just didn't cut it.

What this made me realize is that cooking is a process that is never ending. You can't just drop it, or do it less frequently. While the instinctive sense of what to do in the kitchen will probably never leave you, the tips and tricks that you once learned may have been forgotten. It's like driving a car. If you stop for a while and start again, you will remember how to do it, but it will take a little while to remember what to do when you may encounter dangerous or difficult situations. I now realize that I have got to keep making pizza because it is one of my favorite things to cook, and I will never fully master it until I have done it enough.

Because pizza blogs seem to be all the rage now-a-days, I think I will keep this thread going as my young pizzaiolo career continues. Hopefully I will master this tricky, but beautiful art form.