My On-Going Pizza Lesson

Pizza, yes, simple dough, sauce and cheese, has been my greatest hang up as a cook. I wouldn't mind this so much if it weren't for two points. First, pizza takes time. The crust is started a day in advance and while the steps are simple, they require attention and care. And second, while in Colorado Springs I could just buy the fresh dough from Whole Foods.  I don't have that option any longer.

So I gave pizza from scratch another, well, scratch. I was hoping some of my previous problems were just altitude related. I don't know why torn dough or pizza that refuses to slide off the peel would be caused by high altitude, but I was hopeful.

So after a day of anticipation, I finally had our pizza, bubbly, cheesey, golden. Only to have it refuse to come off the pizza stone cleanly. This time I got it off of the peel and into the oven; it just didn't want to come back out of it. But if you ignore a little messiness, the end result was still fantastic. Highly recommend this recipe and hope you have better luck than I did. And if you have any pointers, please share them!

This recipe yields two pizzas. Alton Brown recommends saving the second for later in the week, but if you have more than two people for dinner, make both pizzas. We only made one for the four of us and it was not enough. And my boys are little. I had already frozen the second ball of dough and so we instead had to raid the pantry.

I highly recommend watching the Good Eats episode, "Flat is Beautiful" but you'll have to rent it. Its not on the Food Network site any more. If you watch the episode, Alton suggests making straight cheese for your beginner ventures. This is so that you can really perfect your cheese/herb/dough flavorings before adding to the mix. Those three things are, after all, the heart of good pizza.

How to Make Pizza:
Alton Brown's Very Detailed Instructions for Pizza