‘zza.

ANYWAY…

I feel like an apology is in order, but 1) my lack of updates has not diminished the quality of anyone’s life, 2) it’s not like you’re paying for it, and 3) after the first week, I doubt you even noticed I wasn’t here.

So tonight, I wanted to talk a little bit about pizza. Which you might have guessed. (The title is inspired by a pizza parlor in Oakland called Zza’s that my family went to once or twice when I was very young. I have no recollection of the quality of the food, although I think I remember that they had an electric sign “ZZA’S” sign inside that they would light up for your birthday. Or maybe I’m just making all this up.)

I finally figured out that for all the things that my oven screws up completely, for all the effort that I have to put into not buring every single thing I throw in there, the one thing it can do really well is cook pizza. I’ve been making a lot of pizza recently, because I enjoy making the dough, it’s easy to find good toppings, and it’s really the only from-scratch bread-type object I can pull off. Plus one batch of dough can last two nights, or one round of pizza plus grissini, which I made tonight. Those turned out pretty good too.

So remember how I said how hot my oven gets – 600 or whatever? Yeah, that’s not right. It has to be much hotter than that. I started noticing that when I put pizzas in the oven after I’d turned the oven on and left it to its own devices for twenty minutes, that the pie would be done in about half the time that any recipe I could find would estimate. And the only reason I thought it was at 600 was because that’s as high as my oven thermometer goes.  My new guess is closer to 700, although without a professional thermometer I may never know.  There may not be an upper limit on how hot it gets – it may just get hotter and hotter until it explodes, and you’re left standing there, fully scorched like a cartoon character, a set of blinking eyes in a body of ash.

Mostly that’s fine, because you want your oven as hot as possible for pizza. It actually works out to my advantage. The only problem is that I don’t have a pizza stone, so my poor baking pan gets all bent out of shape over the heat. Literally. Like Carson Wells, it’s just not prepared for the intensity of the task I have asked of it.  I suppose I’ll have to spring for a stone soon, before my pan shatters in the oven. Plus I have to dress the pizza on the preheated pan because I don’t have a serving board to slide a dressed pizza onto the pan with, so that’s a frantic two minutes. But all in all, the current gear makes a good, crispy crust with a nice sizzle.

Pizza is a great do-it-yourself activity if you plan at least a day ahead – I find that a night in the fridge really gives the crust a good tang.  Here’s the recipe I use for the crust if you’re interested. I’d leave more crust-space than F&W does, and be sure to brush the edges with olive oil. But it’s a good, solid recipe to start with if you don’t have one already.

December 1, 2007. Food Talk. 1 comment.