Day 19: Friday Night Pizza

I used to love the idea of homemade pizza, but as hard as I tried, it never tasted that great. The dough was sterile and hard to work with. I tried various vegan cheese sauces and spreads, but nothing quite satisfied my craving for real cheese. But then two things happened - at about the same time - that changed everything.

First, Daiya came along. The first time I tasted it was at a vegan pizza joint in Boston. I was so excited after we ordered, and equally let down when the pizza arrived. The Daiya was a gelatinous layer of goo that stuck to my teeth - not exactly what I'd hoped for. I've since realized this is because they used too much Daiya. In modest amounts, Daiya acts and tastes like cheese, in a good way.

The second thing that happened was even more exciting. I found The Dough. I kept hearing about the no-knead bread craze, so I looked around and found Jim Lahey's recipe for pizza dough. Holy shit was that a find.

Making this pizza is really easy but it involves a bit of planning. On Thursday night, I mix the dough and cover it, and it ferments at room temperature until I get home from work on Friday. This 18-24 hour rise gives the dough a bit of a sourdough-ish bite, and since it's more wet than other kinds of dough, it's easy to work with (once you get used to it). My old pizza doughs never stayed put when I stretched them out, but this one does.



When I get home from work on Friday, I take the (extremely wet) dough out of its bowl and fold it a few times before the brief 15-minute rise. Then I separate the dough into four pieces and let them rise for 2 hours. This is all part of the recipe, nothing fancy. After about 90 minutes, I start preheating the oven to 500 and get everything else ready. After that it's simple: brush the dough with olive oil, spread some pesto or tomato sauce on top, sprinkle with a little bit of Cheddar Daiya and a little more Mozzarella Daiya, top with whatever (tonight we used thin slices of Field Roast Chorizo) and bake on a preheated pizza stone for about eight minutes. The crust will be thin, slightly sourdough-ish as I mentioned before, and fried around the edges where the thin parts were soaked through with olive oil.

One more great trick - and I forget where I learned this - stretch out the dough onto parchment and transfer the pizza from peel to stone with the parchment underneath. The parchment keeps the stone clean and makes it super easy to get the pizza in and out of the oven.

So do yourself a favor and try the dough. You won't be sorry. With some decent sauce, a little sprinkle of Daiya, and whatever else you want to throw on it, this pizza will knock your socks off. It's better than anything I've had at a pizza place. Maybe that is because I live near shit pizza places, but whatever, it's good.