also happened to be the last pizza party of my forty-first year on earth.
mmmhmmm.
i don't know if you've been made aware of it before,
so i'll take this moment to let you in on a fun fact about y'boi:
pizza is my bottom b!tch.
huh?
yeah, that's an unkind, but especially accurate assessment of the best food on earth.
pizza.
pee eye zee zee ayy.
the longest lasting most enduring love of my life.
awwwwwww.
that's adorable and horrible and also mostly true...
with my berfday impending, i knew i needed to end 41 the very best way i could imagine.
and that meant a big, fat, hot, thick sicilian square,
fully-loaded with all the fresh-to-deathly hottness,
and sprankles,
and a few good dudes to share those righteous right angles with.
check the adios-aloha-type teleport:
THAT'S HOW YOU TAKE DOWN ANOTHER 'NOTHER YEAR'S BEGINNING/END!!
that crust is one of the tightest, yet lightest, and brightest,
born of a batch of brutally beautiful and decidedly delectable doughs i've ever made.
butter-bottomed square-pan activation had me happy before it was even baked.
sometimes, you just get the feels, neighbors.
like, the force awakens, or whatever, and you know that what's coming
is for-sure gonna be that that barbarian boomfire from the jump.
this was one of those...
-
*
CRUCIAL SICILIANO CRUSTACCINO!
-
in your nigh-indispensable stand mixer,
combine:
2 1/4 +/- cups of flour;
1 cup semolina flour;
1 tsp wheat gluten;
1 tsp brown sugar;
2 tsp salt;
1 pkg fast-actin' yeast;
add 5 T olive oil (i'm serious)
and 1 cup warm water, with 1 tsp sugar, and 2 tsp bread machine jar-yeast, bloomed.
-
beat that all up on the second setting of speed,
with that dirty dough hook of yours kneading the heck out of your dough for ten minutes.
-
guys,
cover it and let it rise in warmish spot for thirty minutes.
(my house currently lacks a single one of those, but i made do)
punch it down, re-wrap the top of your bowl, and let it proof all damned day,
or overnight,
or whatever you do to have fresh-baked pizza later,
with ultimate awesomeness exxxploding all over the place.
-
i'm an early riser, so dough starts straight off in the a.m. because there's no time for wastin'.
no matter what you toss on top,
bake that baddie at 485℉,
with convection circulation ensuring golden greatness at every corner of the pan.
yeah!
pizza is the best thing ever. no overstatement, no jokes...
*
now, as a sidebar, let me be honest about my last day before my birhday:
i really wanted to murder crabtree.
first-
his frosted butthole was too damned cold
and his toilet-time sensibilities were too offended
by the blistering bluster of the northerly winds
to encourage him to poop like a normal F*ing animal.
that meant we BOTH froze ourselves silly waiting for him to drop one,
until finally, he had to be incarcerated for the day in his crate while i went to work.
second-
while sequestered in those close-quartrers,
he couldn't hold onto the aforementioned ghost-log until somebody got home;
so at some point during the day,
he blasted out the hottest batch of biomass mudbutt blops in his cage.
huh/
yeah, i was the first responder, and yeah, i had company coming over, too.
tight, right?
you know it.
lucky me, i got to scrub up a whole mess of aromatic awfulness,
with my semi severed finger filling a glove with blood,
because shoving away a sh!t-smeared terri-bullsh!terrier tore it open...
(mmhmm. somehow still bleeding and generally being terrible)
yeah.
sometimes, that's just how it goes, bros.
*
fortunately,
after a thorough scrub-up, and a slew of scented candles,
the night got back on track,
and the eventual pizza party more than made up for the wholly unholy lonely homecoming.
word up.
-
guys,
lemme just say, again:
pizza fixes most things.
and the first pizza of the new year was a BANGER.
braised broccoli AND broccolini?
a twofer of tasty dark greenery?
YEAH!
and shredded baby spinach, for especially iron-activated protein-rich leafy goodness?
HELL YEAH!!
and caramelized onions?
c'mon.
don't be dumb.
there's always caramelized onions.
that's a thing around here.
friends,
a good pizza doesn't have limits.
there's minced daiya on the bottom,
huge scooples of crushed tomatoes over that,
and then spinach, and onions, and broccoli...
but, too much is the right amount, don'tchaknow?
you do, i do, we all do.
that's why there's also sweet tomatoes on there.
AND asparagus, buddy!
yup.
spears of endearment, ready to get longinus on my mouth for realsies.
is that all?
no way.
you can see those cashew-tofu-garlic chee' blops on top.
that's always a good idea.
-
CUSTOM NOTZZARELLA IS TIGHT.
-
a cup of cashews, soaked and drained;
a ton of olive oil;
a handful of nootch;
a few cloves of roasted garlic;
half a bloc of firm af tofu;
light salt, heavy GPOP, a splash of soy....
and maybe even a little sploosh of soymilk,
just to thin it to the perfect dollop consistency.
das IT.
*
is that all?
nope.
rules is rules-
fried garlic sprankles complete the look, and finish the puzzle,
and make the sum up so much greater than the total number of ingredients.
WORD.
that's how it's done when it's being done correctly.
truth.
***********
fat pizza is awesome.
yes, thin crusts are amazing, too.
at home, though?
y'boi loves a heavy lasagna-type overloaded meal of a pie.
i love it.
the first was the last,
and it had to make up for the tension and stress of the day and night.
which it did.
we all loved it,
we all ate it,
it all really happened,
and nobody complained at all.
not one scrap remained, devoured,
just like the 365 days of my forty first revolution.
it all ends, but whenever it ends this well, it's all good;
never quiet, never soft.....
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