Free cheese necessitates pizza

Two years ago, while I was still flying high in the world of finance, my fund had a Halloween party accompanied by far too much cheese. My roommate at the time and myself were catching a ride up to Boston for the weekend, but because of traffic (or some other forgettable delay) we were left at work pretty late. With our extra time alone with the massive amount of cheese left over from the party, we hatched a plot. We would bag it up and bring it home. So, into two gigantic ziplock bags went a mixture of fancy cheeses --- some hard, some smelly, some blue... While we were at it I think we also took a case or two of the left over wine :>
In any case, someone the cheese survived the weekend. This is surprising because as I recall, we almost didn't. While driving up to Boston we hit traffic -- literally. The drive was slow to respond to the changing traffic conditions and we were not able to stop fast enough to keep from hitting into the back of the SUV in front of us. Damage done. Then, on the way back from Boston, just a mile outside of Cambridge, the hood of our friends car (which had been damaged in the prior accident) became unhinged and flew up and smashed into the windshield. This left us blind to the highway traffic. We were able to navigate to the side of the road thankfully.

Needless to say, the next day (I took a train home rather than chance a drive in that hell car) when my roommate and I got back from work we were faced with like 5 pounds of random cheese. The answer was to make pizza. We experimented to our hearts content with different types of toppings and cheeses. Even the stinky cheese became manageable once baked in the oven.

Now, in graduate school, the parties are not quiet as decadent, but there still is cheese. Courant, for most of their parties, gets really good cheeses from Murrays Cheese shop in Bleeker near 6th. Yesterday was such a party, but unfortunately it was not well attended. The result was that I was able to bring home two large chunks of cheese: One of Asagio and one of Piave. Asagio is a cheese which is used in some of the more famous pizza joints in NYC and is kind of like Mozzarella when cooked. Piave is a harder cheese, like a young Parmigiano Reggian. In any case, the obvious thing to do today was to cook pizza.

My mother makes a very nice dough, a mix of whole wheat and white, just made with yeast, flour and water. I've been making my pizzas using moms recipe for a while and it is very good. It comes out pretty crunchy and keeps its shape well. However today I wanted to try something different. Yesterday my office mate told me that when he makes pizza he uses an egg, milk and sugar in addition to my three ingredients. I figured that I would try to include that, plus use beer instead of water. I have heard that this makes for very yummy dough.

Well, I warmed up some McSorrley's Ale (1 beer) and then mixed some of it with a single packet of yeast and some sugar. The yeast was a little old so it took like 10 minutes to start to bloom. Meanwhile I mixed one egg and the rest of the beer, plus some powdered milk in another container. This all got mixed together, as well as a ton of flour, some salt and some dried Italian spices. I used too much liquid and as a result needed to use about 5 cups of flour (mixed whole wheat and white). Eventually this formed a reasonably springy dough. This went into a bowl and sat for about an hour.

Meanwhile I threw together a pizza sauce. I was tempted to try to use Persimmon in the sauce, but my sense of propriety got the best of me - darnit. The base was one large onion diced, one head of garlic diced, and one large red chili pepper diced cooked in olive oil with some Italian spices. Once translucent, I threw in a large can of whole tomatoes and their juice, plus one can of tomato paste and one of tomato sauce. The usual suspect spices went into the mix, plus I threw in some grated Piave cheese. This stewed until nice some of the excess water cooked off.

The pizza dough was way too much for me to cook tonight. In all there seem to be 6 pizzas worth. So I cut it and froze four of the balls. I cooked one tonight and will do another one in a day or two. The dough was not as stretchy as I would have hoped and I needed to roll it rather than pull it into its shape. Still it was pretty resilient and it didn't tear. When shaped I threw it onto a pizza pan with some corn meal to keep it from sticking. My oven is great for pizza because it gets really hot. I usually cook the pizza dough without sauce until it is a little crunchy. This time I didn't give it as much precooking time before saucing it. I regret this because the inside part of the dough didn't hold its shape as well as usually. About two minutes before the pizza was done I threw the cheese and some chopped fresh Basil, Oregano, Thyme and Rosemary onto the pizza. Once melted, the pizza was done.

I wish my old (a different old roommate) was hear, because I think he would have really liked this pizza. He was a really pizza snob, but I made this pizza with his tastes in mind. The cheese went really well, and the sauce was a little sweet. I needed to add a little salt to bring out the full flavor. My only change (and I have five more chances to do this) is that I would have cooked it more before adding the sauce. I really did like the dough, though it was nothing like what I expected to get. From the springyness of the dough, I expected that it would be a pretty springy pizza. Maybe I need to let it rise some after rolling it? The dough was very thin and crunchy, and aside from having a little more flavor than my mothers, pretty similar.

Maybe this is evidence that it is the hands that make dough and not the ingredients.