The Cumbersome Pizza

I like to think of myself as breezy. I want to be the kind of person you can invite to a lake house and I casually say, “I’ll take care of dinner.” Maybe I’ll look effortless chic and make a casual pizza from scratch. Roll out the dough quickly and top it with organic ingredients.

Unfortunately, I’m not breezy. There is 0% breeze going through my personality. I’m a slightly cranky pregnant lady who tried to make a damn pizza and ended up cursing and throwing away my pizza stone while proclaiming, “you’re dead to me!”

The full story:

I started with pizza dough from the infamous Jimmy’s in Dallas. Good start. Too bad I forgot a rolling pin. No problem. Breezy me can use a bottle of Worcestershire sauce to roll it out. I even remembered to flour the counter so it didn’t stick.

Then I transferred the dough to a pizza stone we received as a wedding gift. It holds more heat so the crust gets crispy. All sounds good so far.

I topped with some tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese and every veggie I could think of. I’m feeling effortlessly chic even though I’m wearing pajamas at 6 pm.

Into the oven as high as it will go, and wait 30 minutes. The veggies cook down significantly to look something like this:

Then the drama started. I forgot to flour the pizza stone. The pizza crust and the pizza stone had baked together into a new compound called “Screw-You-Catherine!” I also couldn’t wait until the pizza cooled. I had my mind set on salvaging this pizza and serving it while it was still hot. I took a meat cleaver to the bottom of the pizza trying to separate it. Not surprisingly I mutilated the pizza stone, mutilated the pizza, and somehow lit an oven mitt on fire. I proceeded to lose it. Through my meltdown, I salvaged a few hunks of veggies with melted cheese and served it to my unknowing sister-in-law and her very hungry boyfriend.

I scraped the burnt remnants free from the pizza stone and worked on toning my arms in the process. I thought I would give the pizza stone one more go-round while it was scraped and practically bloody.

I made pizza number 2. I floured the stone. I was set up for success.

Unfortunately, I assembled the entire pizza on the counter. Note to self: raw pizza dough loaded with toppings cannot be lifted. I could not transfer it to the stone no matter how I tried.

Surrendering to the pizza gods, I folded the entire pizza-baby in half and called it a calzone. It cooked unevenly. The insides were gooshy. But we ate it. Nobody went hungry.

Accepting my non-breezy-ness, I threw the damn pizza stone in the trash and committed to ordering takeout for future pizza nights.

**PS. The man would like to add that he cooked a drama-free pizza before I started my fiasco, and it turned out just great. His perfectly executed man-pizza is the top picture.