Pizza Tonight

I've been battling sinus "ick" for about a week now, and last night I just didn't feel like making dinner. I had already managed to do several things around the house while snowed in from my weekly trip to Urbana on Thursday, and I was just exhausted! Yet as my dear husband suggested ordering a pizza for dinner, my fiscal sensibilities reeled as I remembered the huge grocery trip I had just made the day before.

Then I remembered, I bought everything I needed to make pizza at home! I offered to make dinner if he would help, a ridiculous proposal. He's always ready to lend a hand in the kitchen. He's the best sous-chef (french for "under chef") a girl could ask for!

PIZZA

While shopping the previous day, I had taken a moment to read labels in the pizza crust section. By far the best bet was a just-add-water dry mix in a pouch. The fat and calorie count were reasonable and even the saturated fat was low, much lower than the already made, ready to bake crusts. On top of that, it was the Walmart off brand and just $0.46! Deciding that I could also add powdered fiber to the mix because it was in an unprepared form I bought 4 packets as well as pizza sauce. Pizza sauce is a healthy bet if the ingredients are all natural and don't include sugar. The sauce I bought was just 30 calories for 1/4 cup. Tip: 2 packets of crust can make one 18" pizza for just $0.92!

A healthy base for a pizza is a marvelous thing, but it's the toppings that will get you every time! My advice is pile on the veggies! I chose yellow onion, mushrooms, and green olives. (Watch the sodium count and go a bit easy on on olives!) I did decide to add 1/3 cup chopped turkey ham as well. Another favorite I passed on this time is pineapple, often paired with ham on pizza.

The final topping, and perhaps the most dangerous, is cheese. I decided to go 1/2 2% mozzarella and 1/2 full fat Italian cheese blend from Sargento. The total cheese I used was 1 1/2 cup. You could get away with 1 cup if you like. I also like to sprinkle basil on top of the pizza before it goes in the oven.

One secret to a perfect pizza crust is to spray the crust with a non-stick cooking spray (olive oil or canola oil work best) before you top it with sauce. The spray creates a barrier against the sauce soaking into the crust, and the result is a crispy crust instead of a soggy one!

I rolled out the pizza (which is about a 12 or 14" thin crust) on my round pizza stone, adding just a little flour to keep the rolling pin from sticking to the dough, and then baked it in a 475 degree oven for 13 minutes. The package called for 9-11 minutes in the oven, but anything cooked on a stone requires a couple minutes more to be done. The cheese melted perfectly and was golden brown in several spots.

The crust was perfect! We were both very impressed. It was even very manageable when cut into wedges and hand held.

The entire process was actually fun and the result was outstanding! I'm so glad we didn't order out last night!

The song that springs to mind when making pizza is actually a tenor piece called "O Sole Mio" - translation: It's my own sun is. Pizza is round like the sun, and as my husband commented when removing it from the oven: "It's the temperature of the sun, as all good pizzas should be." The song is also Neapolitan, as in the city of Naples, Italy, where pizza is traditionally believed to have been invented.

One of several stories behind the invention of pizza, is that a restaurant chef in the mid to late 1800's wanted to give his leftover veggies, meats and cheeses to the poor and hungry if he could not use them before they spoiled. To make such a gift more convenient, he put the food on a flat bread and baked it in his brick oven. Yum!

Listen to O Sole Mio sung Luciano Pavarotti.

Salute! (sal-oo-tay /Italian for "good health")