When You're Hot, You're Hot: Homemade Pizza

As some of you know, I've got a dough-phobia. Pie dough and pizza doughs leave me reaching for something store bought and jealous of my pals who can do it with ease. When I bitch about my no-dough hands? All I hear is "Allison, there's nothing to it."

This is very annoying. It's not like I haven't tried. But given my line of work, it behooves me to face my kitchen demons, and make a sincere effort to tackle the things which it appears I have no natural talent for.

So I pitched a story on making pizza at home to mainstreet.com, which meant I had to figure it out. I do things like that. I once bought a stick shift car without knowing how to drive it because I wanted to learn. In San Francisco.

I learned, and am proud to say that clutch made it for 10 years.

Forcing functions work. So I asked on of those "nothing to it" friends to come over and show me how. Turns out the thing is damn easy.

For the dough, we started with:
2 cups of water
1 packet of yeast dissolved in 1 1/4 cups of warm water
salt

You make a well in the flour, which is just sitting pretty in a heap on the countertop. Then you whisk in about 1 cup of the yeast water. So far, the process is similar to making pasta dough, and the aesthetic of the well-dough on the counter makes me feel very old school Italian, which means, I admit, I'm enjoying the process.

Then you start kneading, and keep kneading until it's "as sticky as a lint roller", adding a bit more flour and water as you go. Should take about 10 minutes, which means you won't have to do push-ups later. Oh, and add a generous pinch of salt at some point.

Then you let the dough sit for about half an hour, or up to 2 days in the fridge. Get a cast iron skillet or griddle smoking hot on your stovetop, and turn the broiler on. Pinch the dough out until it's pretty thin, then plop it on the screaming cast iron (not joking, make sure it screams). Put your toppings on -- chopped tomatoes and mozzarella; I've been playing with mandolin-thin purple onions, gruyere, green olives, rosemary and olive oil. It's pizza, it's flatbread; it can be whatever you what you want it to be.

Lay the covered dough (moving quickly now) on a rack about 4-inches under the broiler. Watch as the sides puff! Watch as it begins to char! Take it out when the cheese is melty, in about 4 minutes. Devour.

So it's not your traditional Rays pizza. Which makes sense, because I ain't Ray. But it is delicious - and it doesn't require an 800-degree oven. It gave me a sense of accomplishment, and the thrill of meeting a demon head on, shaking hands, and realizing that he's not such a bad guy after all.