A wise man once said, 'forgiveness is divine, but don't pay full price for late pizza.' - Michelangelo
Okay, so I'm probably revealing my age by referencing TMNT in a pizza blog post, but I own my late 80s youth and I'm proud of it! But I digress...
So we will be selling pizzas at our brewpub and today was an experimental cooking day. Yesterday we made our pizza dough and let it sit in the fridge overnight. We had our toppings and we set out to make our pies today. I had the help of my wife, Emily, our two sons Troy and Michael, and my mom came by to help (take a pizza home).
We made three types of pizzas today - cheese & pepperoni for the boys, pepperoni, mushroom and tomato, and then a combination pie with capers, anchovies, artichoke, mushroom, and olives. We used Parmesan and mozzarella cheese on all of the pizzas. My boys (7 and 4 years old) had a blast shaping their own dough and then building their own little mini pizzas. They did a great job too (picture below).
So how did they come out? Well, they tasted good - that has to count for something, right? Presentation needs some work. Always improving, constantly experimenting. That's what we do. Next time, we'll use my mom's Kitchenaid mixer instead of hand cranking the dough. The dough hook on knead setting will make the dough a lot nicer, I bet. I should probably look into a pizza dough press too, because shaping the dough is not my forte (YET!).
But that's okay because all the pizza got eaten, and nobody complained. Baby steps, right? Using toppings that you can't get at other pizza places on island is what we will do. Capers and anchovies are soooo amazing on pizza, more people need to know this! So we'll be selling little 14" pies at our brewpub - they'll be all scratch made, from the sauce to the dough. As best we can, we'll use fresh ingredients (unfortunately artichoke don't grow locally and as far as I know, there's no anchovy in these waters). How about a yellowfin tuna pizza with wasabi aioli though? Gotta get on this ASAP! Keep checking our Facebook page and this blog for more food and beer updates!