As you know if you read my previous pizza post, I am a serious pizza aficionado. To the point of obsessiveness. I am also on a quest to perfect my own pizza recipe. I would love to find a way to make a fabulous pizza in my home oven. I know, it will never be the same because my oven only goes up to 500F, and to really truly get the best crust you need an oven temp closer to 800F. And my standards are way too high. Lofty even. Hrm. Then again, deep down, I don't think that having lofty pizza expectations is a bad thing. In fact, not in the least, as it keeps me out there trying new pizzerias and experimenting at home.
So what does a girl do when she can't fly to Portland or NY or Rome every time she has a pizza craving? (Okay, that wasn't really fair, because there is quite a lot of great pizza here in the Bay Area. I've just not yet found my ultimate gold standard.) She makes her own. And then makes it again. And again. And she hopes that someday she will find or develop the perfect home pizza recipe. That day has not yet arrived for me, although the experiments continue.
Let me back up for a minute. Growing up, my mom always made homemade pizza. Thanks to her, pizza night for us was way better than for most people, because I grew up in Texas in the 70s. Just try to find an edible pizza. Actually, there was one place in Dallas that I remember had really great pizza and delicious crab claws: Campisi's Egyptian Lounge. It's been around since the 1940s. Of course, I would be afraid to go back and ruin my happy memories of the place, but maybe it's still good. Anyway, I digress. My mom made great pizza, and is still to this day experimenting and perfecting and changing her recipe (and my dad, ever loyal, is still sampling it and claiming it as the best pizza in the universe). Because of her, I developed a love of pizza. Well, maybe a passion, edging on obsession. And I've been making pizza for years. All different kinds, and all different recipes. Some were flat-out disasters, and some were amazing, some I couldn't replicate, and others were fine but still not amazing.
The other night I decided I needed to start trying the recipes in American Pie, Peter Reinhart's tribute to my favorite food group (and his too, I imagine). If you haven't seen or read or bought this book, and you like pizza, then I highly recommend purchasing it. It's a great worldwide adventure in search of the ultimate pizza. It also contains a wealth of knowledge and recipes.