Gratitude Monday: raising the dough

It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had was made by my hotel in Berlin last November. So I’ve been thinking about pizza on and off ever since. The People’s Republic does not overflow with excellent pizza, and I don’t care how efficient your delivery people are, by the time it gets to your door, the bloom is off.

So I started to make my own. Turns out that you can get pizza dough in most supermarkets, and—since I like Pizza Margherita—it’s fairly easy to put one of those together. I bought the pizza stone my friend recommended (although, tbh, I’ve got very nice crust on a cookie sheet, so it’s not clear to me that this $27 was the best expenditure; also—how do you get the burnt cheese and tomato sauce off of it?), and bread flour and yeast, but I’d been dancing around the notion of making my own dough, partly because I do not have a history of success with yeast.

So yesterday I screwed my courage to the sticking point and followed the recipe my friend uses. I had a pound of dough from Trader Joe’s for backup, but it turns out that my effort was fine. I made pizza bianca (three types of cheese):

(Yes, I haven't quite mastered the round part.)

And topped it with insalata:

It was delicious, with a slurp of Pinot Gris:

And this is what I’m grateful for today—thanks to the encouragement, recipe and guidance of my friend Heather, I can make pizza dough. Also—I froze ¾ of the dough, so I can have pizza basically whenever I like.