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!