So I find myself in the exciting position of having a few free hours and some leftover pizza dough.
Anticipating a nice meal, I inventory my fridge. Well…it will be a little odd (cheeseless, with mushrooms and ground veal), but fine for people like me, who came to pizza later in life and are open to the unconventional.
I even remember to preheat the oven, noting that when I made the first half of the dough, it was a snap. Because I’ve been steadily getting better at it, right?
As soon as I take the dough out of the bag, I sense something wrong. I shake it off, and start stretching the dough–which promptly tears. And tears. And tears. I reflour, I reknead the dough, I’m doing everything I can think of, but all I have is flour everywhere, hands coated in sticky bits of dough, and a crust that just…isn’t.
Wait, I think. This is only half the dough, but I’m trying to make it the same size as the last pizza. Shouldn’t it only be half the size? I am cheered until I recall that the other pizza in question was made with the first half of the dough. By which I mean to say that both balls of dough were, well, the same. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because the only thing I can create that doesn’t have a hole in it is a giant round sphere of dough. The second it deviates from that shape, it tears.
After about 15 minutes and some increasingly inventive language, I drop the thing on the foil and roll it out by force with my hands–I’m not playing around anymore, particularly now that my entire apartment is rapidly approaching 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
I hastily spoon some marinara over the mess, using a too-small spoon for the nearly-empty jar, so that my hand gets covered in it. My hand is not alone: I manage to get sauce all over the foil I’m using as a pie pan.
Around then, it occurs to me that I have forgotten to pierce the dough to keep it from bubbling. This is particularly problematic since my stubborn crust is over an inch thick in places. I stab it half-heartedly through the sauce.
Next comes the veal (by the way, although I love that a supermarket near me sells ground veal, I am mildly terrified that they sell it for less than $3/pound). I almost pick up the bit that drops on the table before I recall that this is the Contaminated Table*.
*When something such as a pigeon flying into my apartment and sitting on my dining room table occurs, I cannot imagine that the table will ever really be clean again. The table has, of course, been disinfected. Repeatedly. In time, I might even be ready to eat off of it again.
Now for the mushrooms. This has already been such a disaster that I decide not to cause further stress by dragging out the cutting board for something as minor as a few mushrooms. Moments later, as I contemplate the tiny beads blood welling up on my thumb, I consider the possibility that my agitation made free-handing mushrooms unwise.
My subconscious concludes that the only way to round off this experience is to overcook the whole thing dramatically. Apparently, I am okay with turning dinner into a Frisbee®, but I would sooner starve than be inconsistent.