Adventures in Cooking

During my spare time at work, I have a tendency to troll the Internet for recipes. I have a few sites I like, a few blogs I frequent, and I usually end up finding lots of things that I keep in mind for potential dinner ideas. Though I have many staple dishes that I'm comfortable with, I like to experiment as well. 

In a kick of optimism, I decided to make homemade pizza, starting with homemade dough. While I consider myself to be a big baker (how many of these posts have included some mention of cupcakes…), I've never really attempted much in the bread department. Yeast is one of those ingredients that I'm sure they have in the regular grocery store, but I've never really bothered to look for it. 

But, with this new project in mind, I located and bought a few packets of yeast, and, on Monday night, set out to start the pizza making process. The recipe that I read for pizza dough said to let it sit at least 24 hours in the fridge, and up to four days. So I figured if I made it on Monday, I'd have it ready to go any night of the week. 

Last night, after a workout at Chris's dad's gym, I decided to go ahead and make the pizza. Our selected toppings were Italian sausage, onions, mushrooms, and a little bit of green bell pepper for color. 

Starting to get nervous about this whole dough thing, I joked that, if all else failed, we could at least make a pretty good meal out of the toppings. 

Do I really need to tell you what happens next?

Here are the mistakes I think I made:

1) I think my dough was too wet
2) I think I used the wrong kind of pan. It was pretty thick, which I'm convincing myself had something to do with the sides of the dough getting crispy, while the bottom stayed like paste
3) I think I used the wrong kind of yeast

      4) I think I should stick to cupcakes

Luckily, Chris is an excellent sport, and a not picky eater. He gamely scooped up servings of our pizza topping sauce type dinner, while I mixed a salad. And in the end, dinner was good. We drank red wine, and, bonus points, actually ended up with a healthier dinner since I inadvertently cut out the carbs. Silver lining and all that. 

                                      Yeah. Not the best.                           A plate full of...

                      

I do plan on try, trying again at some point, but for now, I think I'll stick to more tried and true dishes.