PIZZA.

hey neighbors!
i was so excited last night for dinner,
i left work fifteen minutes early.
yup.
luckily,
the schedule has been a real pile of poorly executed chaos,
so instead of being booked with fresh, flavorful, lucrative stuff,
i had some very nice, very pleasant clients,
but not enough of 'em to keep me around,
especially when my new dough style was coolly proofing
in the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress fridge....
y'know?
i'm sayin',
the choice was simple-
new hottness, guaranteed,
or the same old busted jauns for a quarter of an hour longer.
i mean, what am i?
an A*-hole?
c'mon.
no contest.
so i got home a baby bit early,
and started the veggie prep with gusto.
i'll tell you all all about it,
but first,
i wanna say a bit more about the dough beyond that it was new-
it needs more water.
THAT'S the thing.
my pizza man connection gave me a heads up
regarding his big-timing measurements for his thin crust's 66% moisture ratio.
kids,
it's molto important to listen when an expert speaks.
so,
i put more warm water to the mix,
and cornmeal to bump up the surprisingly scant amount of semolina i had left,
just to chicago it up-
and of course, i opted to insert a pinchy pinch of sugar, too-
oh,
and i added the softened butter after a scoople of sour cream.
so, basically,
a little change in process, a boost in the liquids,
and an earlier start than usual had me all kinds of wrapped up
in some new new skin for my old ceremony...
-
1/4 cup semolina
1/4 cup fine cornmeal
1 tsp sugar
2T vegan sour creme
2tsp salt
3 cups allpurpz flour
1 pkg fast yeast
...
1 1/2 cups waarm water
2 tsp flax meal
1 T cold-stored yeast
4-6T very soft butterish
warm water for thinning the dough, by sight, to that sticky business.
-
yeah,
its a bit more complicated than my pizza mentor's straightforward recipe.
yeah,
he's almost certainly got a better idea, keeping it real, by weight.
yeah,
i knew i was gonna make a mess of the simplicity of everything,
but how could i not?
don't you know me by now:
too much is the right amount,
and damn me for a punk pumplestilstkin if it didn't activate a triple-ferment
punch-down perfect slightly tangy super sexxy dough, duders.
check the teleport:

friends-
pizza is dope.
that's all there is to it.
the new dough worked just as well in a flat pan as in the springform,
and both of these big baby jesuses had all the right benedictions in place
to assure us of a superior saturday pizza party.
word up.
what was on the menu?
siciliano pannie pizza-pie-man squares!!

BOOM.
thosee sausages i steamed up in the morning got sliced thick,
and then simmered in soy, smoked paprika, liquid smoke,
water, and black pepper, until they were red and plump and ready for baking.
-
i got that underchee', crushed tomato, daiya mozz', caramelized onion, sliced tomato,
pepperoni and fried garlic sprankle magic turning it UP over here.
mmmmm.
it's elite.
-
then,
directly above that,
there's cashew-garlic fresh chee', rinotta-be-kidding-style,
laid over that sauce,
laid over that underchee,
and positively covered in pepperoni,
before being even further activated with browned up king oyster trumpet mushrooms!!
on the ones,
that's $5 worth of fancy mushies, on just one third of the pie.
on the one hand, $5 isn't gonna break my bank account;
but, on the other hand,
that's spending up on the price point for two slices.
huh?
no.
it isn't the money, yo.
worrying about the pinched pennies of food costs for home cookin' is NOT my bag.
for serious-
that's what poor people do.
hahahaha.
i'm just letting you know-
it's the luxury of a full-flavored savory bite of bliss that can't be valued
in mutually-agreed-upon symbolic time/effort compensatory currency.
i other words-
if you can't get fresh with your pizza toppings,
then you can't get fresh with me, either.
no joke.
-
lastly,
i brought it in hot and tasty with the white mountain white pizza format!
braised broccolini, with red onion, and MORE fried garlic spranx?
and with exxxtra-nootch-boosted tofu-chee' blops dropped on top?
spread out all over that thin and smooth garlicky underchee',
there's no excuse not to dive in and stuff yourself silly.
the thinner thick sicilian was amazing!
cakey buttery crust, but not so fluffy that it was weak, like bread,
and not so crawnchy that it was pure new haven, either.
new yorkish, with that rural right-on rockin' radical vegan expertism added in.
i doo-doo that freaky sh!t,pag,
and i
because that's the only way i know how.
fried garlic is a game changer for me.
i mean it.
once you've experienced the power of that allium illumination,
you simply can't go back to living in the dark.
*
my sauce count is back up, brothers and sisters.
it is.
it had been nearly two weeks since last i made a pizza in this house,
and that is NOT the way i want to conduct myself in this kitchen.
i'm glad for the rekindling of my pizza partying,
and i'm gladder still to have somebody that can hang with my shark-gluttony, too.
we travel through life, but we stay home more often than not.
it's a nice place, this woodsly goodness,
and i am grateful for the time i have been given to span among the trees and trails
of this rocky topped secret sacred space.
...what?
SIKE.
more to the point-
it's dope here, even when it's not,
and my great big house is the perfect place to store the wild wizardly museum
of books and artifacts i've accrued as i've aged and seasoned through
the roughest and rottenest wreckage of decades of hard styles, hard heads,
heavy hands, and superlative stubbornness.
i AM grateful, but y'all can save the spiritual journeys an' that
for the delicate doo-doo butter of weak sauce and frozen pizzas.
just be dope, even when it sucks so hard to do it,
and eat more pizza, even if you're full.
we've got a job to do, friends,
and THIS is it;
never quiet, never soft.....