Kyle's Adventures in Pizza Making

Christy gave me a pizza baking stone for Xmas 2003. Thus began my ongoing odyssey of attempting to cook a pizza. It's not as easy as those guys I went to high school with made it look.


This was my first pizza. Known widely as "the lame pizza". It was about six inches wide. Some parts of the crust were paper thin while others were several inches thick. It was not a good pizza. I also permanently stained my pizza stone with this atrocity.	My second attempt was somewhat better than the Lame Pizza. Called "the square pizza." The crust was uniformly about an inch thick. Which was a lot thicker than I wanted it to be.	Things really shaped up around pizza number three. This was after I bought a rolling pin at the dollar store. Previously my biggest problem was getting the dough flat. The rolling pin made this pretty easy.

I was in the fresh grocer the other day, and I was staring at the guy making pizza, trying to figure out his secrets. He kept asking if I wanted to order anything. I kept saying "no, I'm just watching." I think I really freaked him out. I do the same thing to the sushi guys. I have to quit that.


Pizza #4 was my patriotic pizza. I put blue food coloring in the dough. It didn't really look like a flag, but it tasted pretty good.	Pizza #5 had a whole wheat crust. I'd gotten really good at making the dough flat and here was able to get a lip on it. Whole wheat pizza dough is not good. It was hard and dry.	Pizza #6 was pretty much my first really good pizza. The first one that approached a store-bought pizza in quality anyway. The dough was thin, half whole wheat, half white, formed into a rectangle because I'd gotten so good at rolling it thin, I was having trouble fitting them on the pizza stone.


This is just another shot of pizza number six. I liked that pizza.	This was a purple crusted pizza. Pizza #7 looked kind of nice. There are mushrooms, spinach, and tomatoes under the layer of cheese. I thought this was clever at the time, but now I'm not so sure.	Pizza #8 was one of the best pizza's I've made, it was nearly round and it was nicely cooked. I was so excited by it, i forgot to photograph it after it came out of the oven. It looked just like this, but better!


This was a broccoli and tomato pizza. It was very nice. #9, #9, #9 ...	A lovely mushroom pizza with a fluffy thick crust and two kinds of cheese was the tenth pizza I made.	A tad too big for the stone, I had to flatten one of the edges to get pizza #11 to fit. Fresh mozzarella cheese and green peppers made this one quite tasty.


I got a little carried away by pizza #12 and ate most of it before I remembered to take a picture. It was pretty good.	Pizza #13 was an avocado and sliced tomato pizza. Very tasty!	This fine pizza (#14) sported a layer of fresh mozzarella, a layer of green pepper, a layer of mushrooms, a layer of spinach, topped with a second layer of mushrooms and a second layer of mozzarella. it was less of a pizza and more of a pie.


I actually ate pizza #21. It was tasty. We were watching Gangs of New York and cooking pizza in the living room. Every 45 minutes there's a tasty snack to look forward to!	Pizza #22 was a slight variation, a double cheese Easy Bake pizza. Christy ate this one so fast I didn't get to see it.	Pizza #23 was a lovely mushroom pizza with very little cheese on it.

Sometime after pizza 19 I realized I needed to get the stove fixed. So I had a vintage stove specalist come over and look at it. He spent three hours cursing at it like a sailor, but eventually got everything together. It's wonderful to be able to put a pizza in all by yourself! How did I live without this for so long? He reattached the door and cleaned out the burners.


Pizza #24 was heavy with the broccoli, and light with the cheese. I ate about half of this one all by myself.	Pizza #25 had plenty of mushrooms. it was pretty good. But not as round as the last one.	Pizza #26 was a trianguar pizza, which is what I figure pizza's would look like on Star Trek if they ate them there.


Pizza #27 was a round mushroom pizza. Lots of sauce and a smidgen of cheese.	Pizza #28 was somewhat amorphous -- it sat on the peel too long while Christy was chopping toppings and the corn whatnot soaked up into the dough and the bugger wouldn't move off the peel, so the edges got damaged when I manhandled it into the oven.	None of that nonsense for pizza #29, it went in quick and came out excellent, very thin crust, very tasty.


Pizza #30 was nice and rectangular, lots and lots of mushrooms. It was very tasty.	Made in the same batch as pizza #30 was pizza #31. It was made with onions and green peppers. The onions were raw when it went in and i think next time, i'm going to glass them in a skillet first. I wanted crunch, but it was a little too much crunch with the green peppers too.	Pizza #31 was a nice, square, half whole wheat / half bleached flour pizza -- plenty of mushrooms, a pod of broccoli on a medium thick crust.


Pizza #32 was a super thin-crust half whole wheat / half bleached flour mushroom and broccoli affair made for Christy for Valentines day. Then we watched Aliens, Special Edition, which she got me.


Pizza #15 was a collaboration. It was my first real attempt at a thin-crust (1/4 the normal amount of yeast). it rolled out nicely. Christy did the toppings which were mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and artichoke hearts.	Gary made most of pizza #16. I made the dough and he cooked it on the grille. Yes. The BBQ grille. Which is why I made it long and skinny. It was actually pretty decent. Like the loaves and fishes it fed many people, including Sky's band who were rehearsing in the basement.	Pizza #17 was made in my new Holly Hobbie Easy Bake Oven. It looked a lot better before i mangled the top of it getting it out of the oven.


Pizza #18 was made right before pizza #19, out of the same ball of dough. I think i had just a tad too little flour in the dough and it came out very sticky.	There was some definite weirdness going on with the stove, which seemed to turn itself off sometime during the cooking of pizza #19. It was relit and the pizza finished. Mary and Pete had come over to watch Princess Blade, which rocked. There was still a piece of pizza left over at the end. We were all full.	Pizza #20, and the two that followed, were Easy Bake oven pizza's made with leftover dough from a pumpkin pie. The crust was flakey.