After four days of making pizza from a single batch of dough, the only thing that came out blistered was my ego. Yesterday I saw some localized browning on my Margherita (see photo above), so today I had counted on a few trapped bubbles to burst, or at least burn. For good measure I turned on the electric broiler an hour prior to get my oven as hot as it could. Then I slid the pizza in, and just as the dough began to puff up and the cheese to ooze, the power went out.
Not to worry. This happens all the time. The power usually comes back on after a minute. And it did. And then it went out again. This happened a few more times, and then in rapid succession until our lights were blinking like Christmas bulbs.
“My pizza!” I wailed as I made a dash for the generator room downstairs. The maintenance guy was already there, shaking his head. “Something’s wrong,” he said. He turned the ignition key. The machine whined, rumbled, then died. “Hmmm.”
“Well? Do it again!”
Still nothing. Times like these, I find myself hoping that I knew a little more about how these things work. Even better, I should have remembered that we had another, if smaller, generator. Or at least our maintenance should have mentioned it sooner. Dumb and dumber — you decide which is which.
Five-or-so minutes later (it felt longer than that, though), I returned to the kitchen, deflated. My longest-running experiment, foiled by SOLECO! By all accounts, now was around the time when the dough would’ve properly aged. I still had one more ball left — for tomorrow — and I could have made another pizza right then and there, but like I said, I was worn-out. I should sue the power company’s ass for emotional or some such damage, even as I wonder if the court will find this pictorial evidence for or against me:
Crust looks fine, doesn’t it? And yet I can’t help but feel it could’ve looked better than the previous day’s — maybe even with the hoped-for blisters. Still, it was crispy and chewy (and hole-y) in parts, with a noticeably more complex flavor than the pizzas that came before it — yet another wonder of fermentation. Compare with this one, from the second day:
As for the toppings, I must admit I went overboard on Day 4: mushrooms, tomatoes, pimiento-stuffed green olives, capers, braised purple cabbage, red chilies, and onion on a bed of pesto and mozzarella, then drizzled with truffle oil and dusted with Parmesan — my take on Mediterranean pizza.
Tomorrow will be the last day of my quest for blistered dough. At this rate, all I’m hoping for is that the yeast will still be alive by then. And never mind SOLECO. The day I win the lotto, first item on my list is to buy a wood-fired brick oven. Or at least replace our old generator. How do you place a bet, anyway?
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