Pizza Fail

It started innocently enough. I wanted pizza. I've seen several cooking shows making pizza before and figured I'd give it a shot. Then I got nervous about it and gave up the idea. That was a few years back. Being without takeout means being without pizza.  This was starting to get to me but making pizza at home still seemed like a daunting task. Until I was watching my Saturday cooking shows and watched a relatively easy and painless way to make pizza. It was on Delicious TV's Totally Vegetarian which is aired on PBS. The host used store bought dough. I could do that. She used a pizza stone and no other fancy dodads. I could do that too. She shaped the dough on a floured surface then took it to the pizza stone to finish shaping it and to top it. Why, that looks pretty simple! I'm not scared of pizza anymore! I just need to get a pizza stone, no biggie. Went and bought said pizza stone ($17 at Crate and Barrel Outlet, score). Also bought two different premade pizza doughs, whole wheat from Trader Joe's and regular from The Pasta Shop ( a great store in Berkeley).  I waited about a day or so and decided I was ready to make pizzas. Note the plural, I was so sure it was going to be so easy, I planned on making one for me *and* one for Brian. I'd be a pizza making fool.

Here is the pizza stone heating up in the super hot 500 degree oven. Heated it up for one hour.

All the ingredients for the pizzas

The first pizza. I can live with it not looking pizza-y, i.e. round but this....NO. I was fighting with the dough to make it stay in any shape and not snap back. I let it rest a few minutes in between tries but it just never stretched out and stayed that way. Or it would keep getting thin spots which turned into holes. On the show I watched that inspired me, the host said holes are no biggie. Just fix them. I tried pinching the dough together where the holes were, but that didn't work. So how the hell do you fix the hole? I gave up and this was the result. Tasted ok, but needed more toppings. Of course, there was not enough room on it for more toppings. 

Here we have the second try. I half heartedly shaped the dough onto a pizza pan. I had more success at making it round and getting it to stretch.  But I was convinced this second try wouldn't work so I didn't oil the pan first. So when it came out, it was pretty stuck to the pan and had to be pried off. 

Here we have the remnants of what we tried to eat. We got about 4 actual slices pried off the pan and the rest we picked off and ate the toppings. The whole wheat dough wasn't very tasty anyway.

I was very upset but after that initial shock I consulted some cookbooks and blogs to figure out how to do it better next time.

• Make my own dough
• Buy a pizza peel even though I feel goofy having one in my amateur kitchen
• Let the dough rest appropriately
• If I use a pan/baking sheet, for the love of God, oil it first so the pizza comes off
  

When this next time will be, I don't know. Any pizza tips are greatly appreciated. I'm still seriously wanting pizza. It has turned out to be the takeout thing I miss most. I will conquer pizza. And you'll be sure to know about because you might hear a joyous cry coming from the West.