Dine-In Beats Domino's

JESSICA: Last year I developed a Thursday night pizza ritual. With dough and sauce prepared ahead of time, I was able to arrive home from class and create a delicious, nutritious pie just in time to watch The Office.

GREGG: Much of my previous pizza experience included the line, "Thank you for calling Domino's, how may I help you?" Or Rocky's. Or Pizza Hut. Or...or...you get the idea.

JESSICA: Not wanting to deprive Gregg of the full pizza-making experience, I waited until he arrived to start the dough and the sauce.

Not to mention that I had sliced my finger while cooking the night before, and didn't want to sink my hands into the dough...

"Will you knead the dough?!?"

GREGG: "Do you need me to knead the dough?"

JESSICA: "Hee. Yes, I very much need you to knead the dough," I said, gesturing with my bandaged finger, which just so happened to be...the middle one.

GREGG: After I carried on with the "need to knead" banter for several minutes longer than I should have, which we'll spare you in these paragraphs, I began to knead the dough, with very little direction from my mentor, except the occasional line: "You can really beat the crap out of it if you want to. Mix those ingredients well to develop the gluten."

I kneaded for about 10 to 15 minutes, as the dough transformed from a gloppy, gooey mess to...well, a slightly more organized gooey mess, with the consistency of something resembling dough. The dough was placed in a large bowl with a thin layer of olive oil in the bottom to prevent the ball from sticking...and then the bowl was covered with a clean kitchen cloth and I cleaned the remaining dough from my hands and fingers with cold tap water.

JESSICA: We set the bowl aside to allow the dough to rise, and I set about making a simple red sauce using a can of whole, peeled San Marzano tomatoes. I sautéed garlic, whirled the tomatoes in my mini-prep before adding them to the pan with a few red pepper flakes, a handful of Penzey's Italian herb seasoning, some whole fresh basil leaves, and a glug of the pinot noir we were fixin to drink with the finished pie.

Then it was time to prep the toppings: roasting peppers, caramelizing onions, sautéing yellow squash, slicing fresh mozzarella.

By the time the sauce was thick and bubbling and the veggies pre-cooked the dough had miraculously doubled!!!

GREGG: I tore about a third of the ball away from the rest...with the remaining dough separated into two pieces to be frozen for future pies...and began to pull and stretch and flatten the dough to fit the size of a 12-inch pizza pan. My inexperience led to a few rips and holes in the dough, which were easily mended with patches from the edges.

Once we had most of the pizza pan covered with dough, we added the layers—sauce, veggies, mozzarella cheese, and grated parmesan—in artistic concentric circles.

JESSICA: While the pie baked in a blazin' 475 degree oven, we sampled Jargon Pinot Noir, a favorite wine of mine, and noshed on roasted chickpeas, since the pizza-making lesson was taking an eternity, and some of us tend to get crabby when we're starving...

About fourteen minutes later, when the mozzarella formed a golden crust, and the piquant scent wafted through the house, we removed the pie from the oven and stared.


GREGG: I think I busted out a very non-Domino's phrase, and said something like, "That looks really fresh!"

JESSICA: "We made that!"

GREGG: I'm not a big fan of crispy, crunchy crust, and this pizza definitely has a crunch, aided by a thin layer of cornmeal spread on the pizza pan before baking.

But my favorite part of this recipe was the sauce. It had such a different flavor from so many restaurant sauces. Simple, tangy, fresh, tomato-y. While I love squashes in many shapes and sizes, the sauce definitely outdid the toppings on this pizza. Delicious!

JESSICA: While I make tasty homemade pizzas often, this one was especially scrumptious because...wait for the sappy sweetness...we crafted it together.

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Pull up a chair and dish: What's your favorite homemade pizza ingredient?