Foodies & pizza day

food·ie -  /ˈfudi/

–noun Slang.
a person having an enthusiastic interest in the preparation and consumption of good food.

This describes my husband. (here-after referred to as Mr. Foodie)  Thank the universe he is, because I can't cook. I grew up eating everything fried. You name it, my mother, at some point, fried it. She baked also, but mostly cookies and cheesecake. (The regular NY kind.) I do like to bake once in a while but even that has slowed to a crawl since Mr. Foodie's IBS condition has taken such a drastic turn.  Luckily, he enjoys that too.  What's more, he's good at it!

He's made some really delicious things for us over the past two years; from fresh baked bread to shepherd's pie. I think we even had some Moroccan meatballs at one point which had cinnamon in them. *CAK* I'll keep my cinnamon in my pie and on my buns thanks.


Last year about this time I was telling Mr. Foodie about our Christmas tradition. We called it pizza fritte, but you would probably call it fried dough.  We topped it with butter or honey or even powdered sugar.  It was relatively labor intensive with the making of the dough, then the cutting it to bits, the stretching, and then the frying to perfection. So this was definitely a holiday-only treat.

Mr. Foodie was all about making it.  So I rang up my brother and got his dough recipe. I'm  not sure of the origin of it though I think it's relatively straightforward as far as pizza doughs go.  I'm not sharing it just in case though ;)

Out came the trusty flour and before we knew it, the dough was rising! I was excited. Mr. Foodie was excited!

dough ready for shaping

The pizza fritte came out ok. It wasn't as light as I remember it being or as tasty.  I was sad. 

To lift my spirits, it was announced that perhaps we should just make pizza instead of the fried dough. OoOOooOo!

For weeks on end he experimented with his dough. We had all kinds of pizza but the dough was too thick and dense and quite bread-like. We tried it with plain pizza, we tried calzones.  In the end though, it was kind of a bust.  I was sad again.  Mr. Foodie pondered the problem.

Many theories were tossed about. Much like this dough.

fancy pizza moves!

It couldn't be the recipe. Surely not! The humidity is a factor. So is the yeast. So is the water. So is the heat of the oven. So is the heat of the pizza stone.  So is the time of day Mars crosses into the seventh house. Oy!

As it turns out, since Mr. Foodie had received a bread book as a Christmas gift (seriously, there is a method to my madness) he was used to using bread flour. Oops. Pizza dough uses AP.  (For us non-foodies, that's all purpose flour).  The mystery of the bread-like pizza dough was solved!

As you can see here, dough is being shaped quite nicely by the hands of Mr. Foodie himself!

shape shape sha

Suddenly pizza's were flying out of the oven left and right. You want mushroom and onion? No problem! Just cheese and basil? No problem! Sausage? No problem! Pepperoni? Jalapenos? Well, you get the idea.

I must also mention that we have a potted herb garden and our fresh basil, oregano, and thyme really made a difference in the quality of food coming out of our kitchen; especially the marinara we use on the pizza.

But I digress.  Now that the pizza dough recipe has pretty much been perfected, Saturday is pizza day. Every week. Without fail. And every week it's the best pizza we've ever had.

cheese and basil