This is a guest post from my Handsome Hubby a.k.a. Derm Dad.

Pizza Fridays – The story behind the tradition

As a little boy, not unlike many other boys, my favorite food was pizza.  My mother would occasionally make it for our family and sometimes we would have it at a restaurant.  But that wasn’t often enough for me.  I wanted more pizza.  So when I was nine years old, my mother agreed to teach me how to make pizza.  That way whenever I wanted pizza, and I was willing to make it for the family, we could have it.  This was before the days of ready-made crust in the refrigerated section of the grocery store, so I had to make everything from scratch, except for the tomato sauce which was typically from a jar. My goal each time I made pizza was to do everything without any help.  However, I frequently remember my mom bailing me out whenever the dough got a tear in it and I was too frustrated to patch it up. It soon became a tradition for me to make pizza for the family every Friday evening while watching Buck Rogers on television.  The ingredients that seemed to mark the flavor of my early pizza days was the Ragu spaghetti sauce and fresh herbs from my mom’s garden, usually basil and oregano.  My mom would always say “This pizza is the BEST EVER.”  She still says that every time she has my homemade pizza.

Making my own pizza opened the door for me to enjoy other types of foods.  For example, I never liked peppers and onions before I made my own pizza, but since these are two things that are ubiquitous on pizzas with lots of toppings, I quickly started to like them.  It also helped me branch out into other types of recipes.  First, I stuck with Italian.  I modified the pizza recipe slightly by adding ricotta cheese, folding the dough over the top, and putting the sauce on the outside to make calzone.  I learned how to make meatballs, lasagna and even the Italian dessert cannolis.  But pizza was always the dish I would go back to as a favorite.  In high school, my favorite pizza was Pizza Hut pan pizza.  There was something about the thick, greasy, crunchy crust with all the toppings that put me in gastronomical heaven.  I would often go to Pizza Hut with my best friends Jay and Kent in Willimantic, CT with the ambition of us each, individually, eating an entire medium specialty pan pizza.  I don’t think any of us ever quite pulled it off, but I seem to remember my friend Kent coming the closest when he ate seven of eight pieces.  Since I liked Pizza Hut pan pizza so much, I would try to emulate it at home when I made my own pizza.  I thought the key to achieving the signature pan pizza was the thick iron pans that they used at Pizza Hut.  One time, on our way back from Maine, my parents and I stopped at a Pizza Hut in Brunswick.  We asked the waitress if we could buy a pan from them.  Just when it looked like the deal was going to go through, the manager backed out and I didn’t get my pan.  Instead I had to come up with my own style of pizza that I enjoyed just as much.  I had a variety of cooking receptacles including a deep-dish pan, a shallow one with holes in it, and a pizza stone.

For years I tried to make thick pizza I guess as a by-product of my affinity for the pan pizza.  It wasn’t until shortly after I got married, at the age of 33, that I started making thin-crust pizza.  That was also the time when I started getting creative with my ingredient choice.  Up until then, I was always opposed to putting chicken on pizza, feeling that “fowl” did not belong on my pies.  When I learned that the history of pizza was a peasant food consisting of old bread and leftovers, I decided that I would not limit what I put on my pizza as long as the flavors complemented each other.  Like stir fry in the Asian community, curry rice in the Indian community, and Jambalaya down south, pizza would be a delicious means for me to use up leftovers.  I’ve used such wild ingredients as beets, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, mandarin oranges with Chinese mushrooms and okra. Most of the combinations have been successful, although a few of them I would not repeat. Nicole’s favorite is barbecued chicken with barbecue sauce (instead of red sauce), garlic mashed potatoes, and dollops of yogurt. Lately it seems like I can’t make a pizza without caramelized onions and bacon.

My lovely wife honored me in my love for pizza by getting me additional equipment for one of my birthdays — a pizza rocker knife and a dough-docker for aerating the dough.  She tolerated many a smoky Friday night consisting of mad dashes to the smoke detector with a kitchen towel swinging around like a sling to clear the smoke. When I finally got a grill, at 37 years old, I decided to take my skills outdoors.  That would eliminate the smoke from the house and keep the heat down during the summer.  At first, I decided to use a 15 x 15” pizza grill stone.  With the very hot surface of the stone, the crust would quickly burn if I was not careful.  I could not precook the crust because it would be black by the time the toppings cooked.  Instead, I had to make the pizza and put it all on the stone at once with a pizza peel coated with cornmeal. I learned that if it took me too long to make the pizza on the peel, the oil would soak through the dough (or work its way over the edge and underneath) and would not slide off the peel onto the stone.  I have had several disasters of pizzas rolled up unevenly on the stone because it wouldn’t slide off the peel.  Finally, I decided to try pizza the Bobby Flay way – put a heavily oiled dough directly onto the grate of the grill.  I had always hesitated to do this because I was afraid the pliable dough would dip down between the grates and fall into the flames.  To my delight, this did not happen.  As long as the grill is hot enough, it bakes so quickly that it maintains its shape and can be removed from the grill (with some care and a big spatula helping it onto the peel).  I keep the dough on the grill for about 1.5 minutes before I flip it and put the sauce and toppings on.  My wife’s help is essential at this point because I can only have the pizza on for another 2 minutes before it gets burned.  Time is of the essence because I need to get the toppings and cheese on with enough time for the cheese to melt evenly.  It is a high stress event but the rewards are worth it.

The dough recipe is the same recipe that I use for bread.  It is a freshly-milled soaked grain recipe given to me by my wife a few years ago.  I won’t go into the details of why it is soaked (ask my wife for the reasons for our unusual cooking methods), but it does take more than 24 hours before it is ready to go.  After making a large batch of dough in our Kitchen Aid mixer, I divide it into eight balls which I then freeze for future pizza crusts.  The night before we want pizza, I take a bag out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator.  Three to four hours before making the pizza, I pull it out of the refrigerator and place it on the counter to warm and rise.

The latest family pizza craze is really a spin off of my grilled pizza.  I use the same dough but instead of piling on toppings and cheese, I grill just the dough making my version of an Indian Naan bread.  My family can then use it, as they do in India, as a utensil to eat vegetables or even meat that are prepared separately (often as leftovers too).  I am still perfecting this technique and have now added fresh minced garlic (about 6-7 cloves) and knead it completely into the dough right before I roll it out to be grilled.  My wife absolutely loves it.  That makes me happy because lately my wife has been off breads which has left me craving it.  Now that we both have a bread we like, we have found a happy compromise.

You can read all of Derm Dad’s guest posts here.