7.21.26 | A Pizza The Past
Becca's not the only pastry chef in the house slingin' pies!
Hot damn, do I love a good pizza! Becca and I eat more pizza than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eatin' pies like Babs Daitch! Just dough, tomato, cheese and fixins. (Read this next part in Barry White's voice.) “I do a looong, coool fermentation. Hiiiiigh gluten, bread flour, Ripe! Tomatoes, Hand shredded mozzarella cheese. Allllll the fixins.”
Okay, truth be told, I'll never be as cool as Issac Hayes. Or Babs Daitch for that matter. Maybe Becca, but definitely not me. We do make a pretty good pie on the weekends though. I like to start my dough early in the week. This gives Becca and me time to choose our fixins. I would love to tell you that we're doing weird experimental toppings like Korean pork belly and kimchi or fermented ramps with asiago foam. Deconstructed, reconstructed, molecular and cool. But no, we like the classic. We put our pepperoni on one at a time, just like everyone else. Truth be told, Becca likes her veggies and I like salted and cured meats. So we usually do our own personal pizzas.
Shaping the pizza has come down to a quiet competition. Not so much for Becca, but for me. Becca's pies are classically round, smooth-textured dough with no tears, holes or blemishes. Mine look like Salvidor Dali's melting clocks. Have you ever watched a YouTube video of a wild bear trying to use a hammock? That's what I look like when I roll out my dough. At the end of the day, they both taste great. Becca's are more aesthetically pleasing, and while mine taste “artistic,” I seem to always get a bitter aftertaste when I see Becca's perfect pies.
I am writing this (at 1:52 am) because an old family friend came in for dinner tonight unexpectedly. I saw his name in the reservations earlier in the day, but not in a million years did I think it was the same person. I didn't even notice that, indeed, it was the same person I knew from my upbringing, in our dining room at a table with family and friends. I’m in the kitchen, I look up, I see a bearded man glancing around, obviously looking for someone and then I recognize him. He was looking for me. I went over, we said our hellos and hugged and he enjoyed his dinner with his guests.
I saw them taking pictures of the food and enjoying each other's company. It was fun to watch. I am not always a font of conversation in the dining room. Sometimes I do well at public speaking and sometimes I do well as the kitchen hermit. I don't get to control which personality I get each day. Today I enjoy watching this old family friend from the kitchen pass. It was a great surprise to see him after so many years, but what really surprised me, what caught me off guard, was the memory of a pizza I had at his house, a pizza his wife made for me and their son when we were young. Seeing this old family friend brought back memories of … pizza.
I had never had anything like that pizza in my life, or anything like it since, really. She made it in this large pot, and the dough was full of these huge puffy bubbles that rose up the sides of the pot and the tomato sauce was bright and vibrant with flavor, and bright and vibrant in color as well. Fire engine red. It was one of my early food memories. Alongside Pop's potato soup and my grandma's grand Thanksgivings.
Reacquainting myself with this friend at such a later time in life made me realize I have been talking about this particular pizza for years. In countless kitchens, over tables of empty beer bottles in the back alleys behind shady restaurants, I have been bringing up this pizza I had once upon a time ago. Just in casual conversation with other people who enjoy eating food and talking about it. It never occurred to me until right now what an impact it has had on me.
Even though Becca and I make pizza at home quite often, never have I made a super puffy, candy-apple-red large pot pizza. But it was recently our anniversary (12 Years, Baby! Whoop whoop!) and I bought her some special flowers … sorry, flours. Specifically some special pizza flour and we’re making pizza tonight. We'll see how it all turns out.
I think I enjoy making pizza so much because we don't serve it at the restaurant. At the restaurant we have to test recipes, taste, start over, season and reseason etc., etc., etc. But when it comes to pizza, I get to experiment. Should we use “00” flour? Should we adjust hydration? Should we use the stone or steel? A red sauce or a pesto?
At the end of the day there is no such thing as truly bad pizza.
Give me your tired and over-proofed,
your huddled mass of yeasty dough.
Your misshapen and torn.
I'll eat em all.
—Matt
P.S. The gentleman that came in to dine tonight didn't make the pizza that I waxed on about, his wonderful wife made the pizza, but I thought I would put in an honorable mention about the bean and cheese burritos he brought on canoe trips down the James. It's good to have a life vest, a paddle, and a belly full of burritos when going over Balcony Falls.