“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amour!” OH, sing it to me Dean!
To me there are certain things that just define Italians. The Rat Pack, an amazing bottle of homemade red wine, and pizza! This is also my definition of THE perfect date night! Pizza as we think of it today is a little different then what it started as. The medieval Mediterranean people made flat bread and put oil over the top called it pizza. Much later the red sauce and cheese were added. Now we put pretty much anything we want on it. It was originally a dish of the poor, meaning CHEAP, sold on streets and in markets. This is sometimes true today, depending on your method of obtaining the pie! We have found the best pizza place in the entire world. The only other place that even compares is our kitchen! I love that I am part Italian and that my Grandmother Bernice is proud of it!
I feel very fortunate that I came from families that enjoy food. With many of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents I can remember making great food. My Grandma B (my mother’s mother) and I spent a lot of time together when I was young. I remember her house always smelling of food. I hated when it was smelled of fish, looking back I love that memory. Walking in and saying, “Gramie your house is stinky!”
She would laugh and say “It’s fish, Princess. Fish is yummy, and good for you. Gramie will make you some?”
“NO!” I would squeal and she would just laugh.
When I was in 5th grade I lived with my Uncle Sam and his family for a while. His wife Zoë used to have family pizza night sometimes. Instead of going out and eating pizza, we made it. My Gramie had put a cook book together of my family’s favorite recipes. One of them was her spaghetti/pizza sauce and another was Zoë’s pizza dough. We made it all from scratch, then topped, baked, and enjoyed. These are some of my fondest and strongest memories from childhood.
Adam also has a really close family that grew up with 3 kids the same age, who are all still friends. The Von Asche’s grandmother used to have homemade pizza night at their house a few times a month and the boys had a standing invite. They still remember and talk fondly of those times. Adam and I are determined to give our kids those same fun family pizza nights. We figure practice makes perfect so why not start now. Unfortunately and fortunately our oven has not been working, diagnosis TBD. On the upside we are getting really good at pizza a la BBQ!
I know right! That is just crazy, or is it? We have found that we almost prefer the BBQ pizza. Then Adam and I got an amazing cook book for our wedding called My Bread Book, by Jim Lahey, of course from Sam, Zoë and family. We have found the pizza dough recipe from this book and the BBQ are perfection and most definitely prefer! Now we just need some fine tuning on pizza timing. The never ending experiment can be an Italian family tradition in your house as well!
Chi trova un amico trovare un Tesoro. Salute è buon appetitio!
Basic Pizza Dough
7 ½ cups Bread Flour
2 packages (1 2/3 tablespoons) of instant or other active dry yeast
1 ½ teaspoons table salt
1 ½ teaspoon sugar plus a pinch
2 ¾ cups room temperature (about 72 degrees F) water
E.V.O.O. for the pans
Stir together flour, yeast, salt, and sugar. Add water and using a wooden spoon mix until blended. It should hold together mostly on its own. It should be a little stiff not really wet or sticky. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the dough has more than doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Using rubber spatula remove the dough from the onto a floured work surface. Separate into three parts and form into a rough ball. Let them rest for another 30minutes under a moistened kitchen towel spacing them 4 inches apart on your working surface.
Some of our favorite toppings include:
Sausage
Pepperoni
Salami
Yellow Onion
Mushrooms
Black Olives
Real Bacon
Pineapple
Cheese
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