New Year's resolutions - new recipe, week 5 - Roberta's Pizza Dough

I almost didn't make it this week; the original plan had a new dinner recipe for the crockpot in the works, but for reasons that I now can't remember less than four days later, it didn't happen, postponed for a few days. Then, to further put my resolution in jeopardy, I came down with a wicked upper respiratory thing on Friday and still felt pretty lousy on Saturday. Between a lack of energy and a noticeable lack of enthusiasm from Justin in me being around food that he might eat, I felt like I might have to take partial credit thanks to the extra recipes already "in the bank" this year.

BUT - being me, and being resolutely committed to resolutions, I rallied!! It's evidence, once again, of the power of writing things down. Honestly, would it have mattered if I'd let a week get by without making something new? Maybe not to every single other person on the planet, but it mattered to me: I had set a goal, written it down, and it wasn't like I was running a fever or bedridden or incapacitated. As long as I washed my hands thoroughly and frequently, kept my face well away from all ingredients and was smart about hygiene, it was FINE!

I figured, simple was best, and breakfast was a good bet since I would be fresh from a full night's sleep. I looked through my Better Homes & Garden cookbook, found a recipe for banana bread that would use the last three spotted bananas we had, and considered it a plan well made. Until Saturday  morning when I woke up after sleeping fitfully, puttered around so long that Justin was making breakfast, and discovered he had used one of the bananas. *sigh*

Plan B: Roberta's Pizza Dough! This one had been on my radar since receiving it in a NY Times email, and I figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained! With the Super Bowl on Sunday and our usual fare of finger foods less appealing than usual given how often we'd had it in the last six months, Justin and I had talked about homemade pizza as an alternative, but never really committed to it. This was put up or shut up time: four ingredients, minimal effort to match my minimal energy - it was a go.

Flour, salt, yeast, olive oil - the basics!

The recipe called for very specific measurements by weight, and I've read enough to know that a digital scale is a very important tool in the kitchen. I took my time, measuring each ingredient, taring the scale properly, following the recipe as closely as I could.

Since the recipe indicated I would knead the dough in the mixing bowl itself, I was a little perplexed as I tried to imagine reaching into a typical mixing bowl. I improvised and used our big pasta bowl instead, which turned out to be both unnecessary and a stroke of genius! Unnecessary because I had way overestimated the bulk of the ingredients (it wasn't that much) and genius because the shallow depth made it super easy to knead.

Now, whether I did the kneading properly or not is still up for debate; it was a sticky mess for the initial three minutes of kneading, and looked a bit lumpy and lost-cause-ish while it was resting for the prescribed in between time.

Let it be said, though, I am not a quitter! I was going to see this through to the end, and figured until it failed to rise, there was still hope. As it was the day before we planned to actually make the pizzas, I chose the rise-in-the-fridge option, which meant dividing the dough and placing it in two separate bowls.

I had figured out I should flour my hands by this point, which made it much easier to manage the dough - I had also figured out, pizza dough is probably supposed to be a bit stickier and stretchier than the white bread dough I had made, so I was feeling at least marginally more confident by then. I call that making progress as a baker, to have at least formed that hypothesis on my own!

For the final product, it technically lands in week 6 of 2018, but it also technically wouldn't be considered a new recipe as I've made homemade pizza before, just not on homemade crust! We'll call it follows credit (footnote my high school Geometry teacher).

Around 2:30 on Super Bowl Sunday, I pulled the bowls out of the fridge, and the dough had risen beautifully. I once again had overestimated the rising process, but better to have too big of a bowl than too small, I guess! We were sticking with the basics for the pizza, and with all of the ingredients together, I was ready to get started.

Justin very graciously offered to help shape the dough (potentially also out of an instinct of self-preservation, but I'm appreciative either way) and we worked together to stretch the two balls into our crusts while the pizza stones heated in the oven. And set off the fire alarm as the grease baked into the stones burned off. I subsequently found out that's basically a mandatory step in the making of homemade pizza, ha!

Add some sauce, add the toppings, and tuck them in the oven!

Final product was both lovely and delicious! Thin crust pizza, for sure, but everyone agreed it was excellent. So simple, I bet I'll make this one again, but maybe instead of dividing the dough we'll make one pie that is a little bit thicker crust to handle the extra sauce we all love.

I figured this begs the question - if I can make NY style pizza crust, are Philly style cheesesteaks next?! Pass the Cheez Whiz!!