A Pizza My Heart

For Valentine’s Day, we usually opt to cook together at home, and this year homemade pizza was on the menu. 

In the morning, I stirred together the dough:

Slow-Rise Pizza Dough

3 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon yeast*

1 1/4 cup water*

Stir together ingredients until all dry flour is incorporated. Cover and let sit 8-24 hours. When ready to use, preheat pizza stones in 500º oven for half an hour while you prepare toppings. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and roll into desired shape. For a thin crust, cut in two and make two pizzas.

*When rise time is on the shorter end I will add slightly more yeast and use lukewarm water. Otherwise, cold water is fine. The slow rise gives plenty of time for chewy tanginess to develop.

Phil does not have a recipe for the sauce. Like George Costanza’s parking ability, Phil’s pizza sauce is not really something he can impart to others. I had my hands full with the heart shaped pizza dough, and couldn’t really see what the sauce boss was doing.

Phil’s Pizza Sauce
Add some of each of the seasonings pictured to the tomato sauce. Add small amounts at first, taste, and add more as needed.

We all agreed on the toppings (pepperoni, sausage, onions, and red peppers) and Ben oversaw their placement.

Our meal actually started with shrimp cocktail, which needs no explanation, and a whole bunch of celery sticks with bleu cheese dressing to dip them in, which may require a little explanation. 

Whenever we are out and order wings, we always opt for the bleu cheese and celery to accompany them. Fine. We still qualify as a normal family. However, restaurants have recently really started skimping on the celery. In a plot twist I still don’t understand myself, we all tend to zero in on the celery sticks to be sure we each get our fair share. Of celery. There are wings on the table. Phil, the economist would have something to say about scarcity, I’m sure, but his recent strategy has been to order double celery. Sometimes he’ll even start telling the server how nobody serves enough celery anymore. It’s embarrassing.

In fact, this very scene played out at The Mountaineer the previous evening. Judging by the gallon of bleu cheese dip that arrived, I think the “double celery” order was misunderstood, and we all still mentally counted the paltry number of celery sticks and divided by three. We eyed each other and the celery, somebody drew first (my bet is on Ben), and it was on. When the dust had settled, and not a speck of green was left on the plate, we moved on to the wings.

Since celery with bleu cheese seems to be our current love language, I cut up an entire bunch (maybe 8-10 stalks) and served it with bleu cheese dressing as a pizza prequel.

Ben ate everything on the right side of the tray before helping us with the other side.

We hope that your Valentine’s Day was just as magical as ours, but if you didn’t make homemade pizza together or share an entire tray of celery, I’m not sure I like your odds.

A pizza my heart.