Pizza Pizza

My super cool 'brother-in-common-law if New York recognized common-law, which is doesn't' sent me some fresh pepper seeds from his garden! YES! So naturally I had to get busy making a pizza. Well, I guess its not exactly a natural progression but I think of those little pepper seeds just so happy to be all over my freshly baked pizza slice and I get all giddy!

I usually make the white flour crust but I heard Mark makes a super good whole wheat crust dough so I thought I'd try one in his honor and then the whole thing would be sorta spiritual. You see I often believe my food means much more than it probably does but its a harmless belief really. Why not believe? It's like my hope that there really are space aliens. Wouldn't it be cool???!

I forgot how many little steps it takes to make a pizza though so I had to make up time tonight when I finally came out of my on-line Scrabble coma. Lots of ways to screw up a pizza. Your dough, your sauce, your toppings. How you layer it. Cheese last or first? I end up getting all my toppings together while the dough is rising and my sauce going and I have to decide if I want to make separate topping pizzas or put it all on there and who minds that?! 'Everything' pizzas were a huge luxury growing up.

I think I'll do two separate pies to make it exciting. One will be pepperoni, green & black olives, & artichoke hearts - the other italian sausage, onions, spinach & ricotta. Yeah.

Of course there is always one thing to be stressed out about because you gotta have like 20 items on hand to make these things. I only had tomato sauce and diced canned tomatoes and I usually like to make my sauce with paste, so time will tell if this will make a runny sauce.

Then there is my oven. It gets too hot and its basically a piece of crap but you know you work with whatcha got and so I just gotta watch it closely. We like our crust thin and crispy so should I pre-bake the crust??? Now see, that's another freakin' thing you gotta decide. But I got the wild-card oven to think about, so ....better not chance the burnt bottom.

Lots of things can go wrong with pizza.

And then again, how bad does a pizza have to be to not get excited about it? When you see it all ready to eat and hot and cheesy - all is forgiven in the kitchen.

...and then the gift...the little morsels of magic, the red pepper flakes, fresh from the garden get to dance all over and make friends with the sausage and pepperoni. They like each other, no, they LOVE each other!