Category: pizza

I luuurve our pizza stone. I’ve never had such crazy, impassioned feelings for a kitchen implement before, but this is true and lasting love. This is neverending devotion and infatuation. This pizza stone is the answer, the solution to all of my dough baking woes, to my not quite perfect crusts and my constant feelings of pizza dissatisfaction. Now that there is a pizza stone in my life, I can scale the peaks of pizza perfection, I can create crispy cheesy bites of wonder and glory rivaling anything the local pizza delivery man can send my way. My dreams of creative pizza experimentation can be realized.

Ok, I might be waxing just a bit too poetical, but when I pulled this pizza out of the oven last night, I couldn’t help feeling a little thrill in my heart. It was, yes, the best pizza so far. I realize I say that every single time, but I also take that to be a sign that my methods are improving. And method, shmethod, the single best pizza improver so far is the pizza stone.

Continue reading Pizza Chronicles, Part Six (or Eight): Stonewall Kitchen and a Pizza Stone

Our house is right on the main road running through Jamaica Plain, a road traveled at most hours of the day and night by buses and trucks that can’t take the windier and narrower alternate route into Boston. Very noisy buses and trucks. My bedroom windows are situated in such as way as to really effectively transmit that noise right from the street level straight to my bed. It’s truly amazing, a real feat of engineering! What this means for a light sleeper like myself is that once summer’s arrived and the windows are open, I’m woken up every morning at 4.30, when the first bus rumbles by, electonically squawking “Route 39, Forest Hills to Back Bay, Route 39.” Lately, various mental stresses and strains have preventing me falling right back to sleep, and this morning I said to myself, “F*&% it, I’m just getting up! Hell, the sun’s already up! Why not me?”

This explains why, by the time I got the DMV at 8.30 am, I was already grouchy.

There is no group of people in this world better skilled at causing ladies to want to yell lots of swears and weep copiously than the fine people at the Chinatown branch of the  Massachusetts DMV. Needless to say, I found myself in a bureaucratic hell spiral for most of the morning, gaping incredulously at the lack of logic and competence around me.

Continue reading Pizza Chronicles, Part Five: A Field Guide to Pizza Excellence?

This has not been the greatest of all possible weeks in the kitchen. Sure, the swordfish kebabs were good, but could there be an easier dinner preparation? I didn’t even skewer the swordfish myself! I blame the stress–I spent most of the week worry about about how I am going to fund my graduate school education, and felt in no mood for cooking. And we had so many leftovers, what with Friday’s chicken cacciatore and Sunday’s tacos, it seemed wasteful to cook. I spent most of Monday trying to figure out what to do with the leftover chicken cacciatore, and suddenly, lightbulbs, brilliant idea! Put it on a pizza!

I maintain that this was a brilliant idea. It made an excellent pizza topping, even if I did have too much of it. But something atrocious happened with my pizza dough, and I am STILL mystified. I used the Giada recipe from a few months ago, which worked just fine then. Perhaps my measuring skills were a little more casual this time around, but I know they weren’t so far off as to have produced…what they produced.

Continue reading Pizza Chronicles, Part Four: Bad dough, but a good idea for leftovers

Apparently, it is my kitchen mission to mix and toss and stretch and top until I find the perfect home kitchen pizza dough. This, my friends, is the best I’ve tried so far. The crust was the closest to crispy its been yet, and any shortcomings are surely the fault of the pan on which I cooked said pizza, and not the crust itself. This time around I gave that dough a full 24-hour fermentation period. I let the oven heat for over 45 minutes, at 500F. I finally managed to stretch a pizza dough without ending up with huge gaping holes in random places. I think, yes, I believe I’m finally getting the hang of this!

The topping on this best-yet pizza dough was none too shabby, either. Fontina cheese, fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, and some leftover turkey meatballs (from the meatball trauma of weeks ago)–man, this thing was deeelicious. After taking it out of the oven I sprinkled some coarsely ground sea salt and dried oregano over the thing, to loud and resounding applause from Miss Crystal. I had originally thought to add capers, and decided not to, but I’m thinking that would have been a nice idea.

Continue reading Pizza Chronicles, Part 3: Whole Wheat Crust and Turkey Meatballs

I debated whether to even put this up here, because I didn’t actually make anything you see in that picture above (oh, except the chicken, which was leftover from a roast I made a week ago). I bought the pizza dough, and the tapenade, and the cheese, at Trader Joe’s, because I was feeling a little lazy. I decided to write about it, though, in the spirit of a review, and because it was such a good combination of ingredients that I had to share.

I am an unapologetic lover of Trader Joe’s. When I first discovered it, in my college years, I was immediately addicted. They have great prices on staples, like olive oil, and luxury stuffs, like champagne vinegar and truffle oil. When I didn’t have time to cook, their frozen dinners were much better than anything I could find at the local supermarket. They had all kinds of meats and cheeses that were otherwise hard to find, and I could get a big canister of delicious dark roasted coffee for $3.99! Despite the fact that coffee is now $5.99, and that I have to beg Mr. X to drive me or walk seven loooong city blocks during my work day to get there, I still love Trader Joe’s. I went yesterday because I needed coffee, and was completely tempted by the vision of an interesting pizza dinner that floated into my head when I caught sight of the Artichoke Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade.

Continue reading Artichoke Tapenade and Chicken Pizza (or, Not-Quite-Homemade Pizza)