Pizza
Everyone loves pizza.
I do. When I moved to New York to live with my parents in 1975, I was immersed
in a world of pizza, hamburgers, French fries, Italian food, and McDonalds,
Chinese food – completely different from what I ate as a child. I grew up in
the countryside of Jamaica, in pretty much third world environment where eating
out meant to a neighbour for Sunday dinner, and that was very rare. But, I am
writing about pizza. I loved and still love New York's pizza, the chewy crust,
the rich tomato sauce and cheese, although today I find the salt content
exorbitant. I usually preferred cheese pizza. I moved to live in the United Kingdom
where I did not find much in the way of pizza. Then, I moved to back to Jamaica with my husband and of
course could not find the New York treat that I had come to love. Moving to
Vancouver, I found pizza again but the dough did not have the chewy bite that
New York pizza had. In Australia, the pizza was very adventurous. I once had a
pizza in Sidney that was covered with large shrimps with the shells with heads
on. It took me many years to make my own pizza. I started with making bread at first
from scratch. I made my first pizza using the recipe from an Italian cookbook I
bought when I lived in New York. The dough was ok, not the same as my favorite,
though. I tried again and again until I became comfortable with making dough.
Now I make the best pizza in my estimation. I do not buy pizza any more.
Ordering pizza required spend time searching for the phone book, Google now,
pulling out the phone and decide what I wanted from the menu. Of course, if
there were something on the pizza I wanted to change, it would cost me more. By
the time I have figured out what I wanted, made my choice and paid, several
minutes will have already passed. Then I would wait forty minutes or more for
the pizza to arrive, sometimes cold. Whenever I lived on the outside of town
which took more time to get the pizza in, I would also pay a delivery
charge.
My friend, Joeseph,
came over for tutoring one day and I offered to make him and his mom and
brother pizza for dinner because he had done so well in school. I made the
dough, which took ten minutes from pulling out the flour to the final resting.
We then kneaded the dough a second time, rolled out the dough and everyone had
what they wanted on their pizza. Joe's mom brought pizza sauce in the can,
which was just fine. I never liked pizza sauce, because it caused the topping
to fall of, I opted for olive oil, garlic, shallots, cheese, slices of fresh
tomatoes, oregano and fresh basil. The pizza party was a great success. The
cost was just pennies less than two dollars per slice, and it was as gourmet as
it get.
Here is my pizza
recipe.
For
two people:
2
1/2 cups flour. (you may mix half-and-half whole wheat if you want)
One
packet dry yeast. Fast rising yeast is fine but the regular yeast is
what I use.
¼ cup
warm water – keep the water on the cooler side of warm.
1
teaspoon salt
½ cup
warm water
Olive
oil.
Put
the yeast in a small bowl and add a quarter cup of lukewarm water. Leave it
five minutes to foam up while you get your other ingredients together. Put the
two cups of the flour in a bowl add one teaspoon of salt and a pinch of sugar
and mix together. Add the dissolved yeast and another half cup of warm water
and mix until you get a soft dough. Turn out onto a flowered surface and
lightly knead until a smooth dough is formed. Put into your oiled bowl and let
rest for ten minutes or up to one hour. Prepare your toppings - even shrimp in the
shell and head on. The pizza will bake in a hot oven, four hundred and fifty degrees
for about ten to fifteen minutes. See my example below. You may not want to buy
pizza again!