I have to admit to ordering pizza out when I’m in a lazy mood in the US. I’m usually disappointed. The sauce tends to be gloppy, sitting atop the kind of tasteless, nondescript bread crust that the US is known for. But when I make it at home, it’s always good. It’s like beer. People think it’s magic to make, but it’s not hard and very rewarding to consume.
Here it is:
This one has shitake mushrooms and green garlic. The sauce is a little orange, the result of using, I hate to say it, canned tomatoes that weren’t up to snuff which I whipped to a frenzy with a hand blender.
I use what Italians call a biga, a starter. It’s not sourdough starter, it just means that you stir the yeast in with some flour and water til it’s a soupy mix, then you let it sit for 8 hours or so. That means I start my biga in the morning and by four in the afternoon I make the dough out of the biga, salt, a small amount of cold water so the dough develops slowly. It rises until I’m ready to make pizza.
I cook the thing in a 500 degree F (or so) oven on a stone. It looks like up there. It tastes like heaven, a good balance between the sauce, toppings and crust (which isn’t crispy due to the biga, but is big and yeasty like I like it).
So there you have it. Now I want a wood oven. I want 900 degrees. I want it now.