Cooks Illustrated Thin Crust Pizza

This is S.

The best recipe I've found in a while comes from a source we use all the time for things that aren't pizza: cooks illustrated online. I won't put up the whole recipe, but key elements include:

* An overnight rise in the fridge. I don't think I'll try rising dough again another way because the dough that this creates stretches beautifully and doesn't break part or tear which can be super, super frustrating. This relates to the nice color on the crust too.

* Mixing the dough in a food processor and then only a little kneading. Seems to work better for me than other recipes I've tried with a dough hook.

Here's some photos of the results:

Spirituality of pizza

This is S...


R has been encouraging me for months now to restart this blog, to share and remember some of the best meals we've had in Seattle recently and especially to write about pizza. I've been spending a lot of time with dough--actually, one of J's first words was dough and she is always trying to press out balls of dough into little rounds of pizza. When I was a kid I never knew where I could turn to be creative--art wasn't it, athletics wasn't it--and now with R's support I am finding some outlets, my guitar, and also especially making pizza.

Something about this pizza making has been healthy, even healing for my spirit:
I love how messy I can get. I love the playfulness of trying to toss and stretch and knead. I love how embodied I feel, hands sticking to risen dough that is alive, filled with the gift of yeast fermenting and moving and changing it. I also love sharing what I create with R and J, and the joy that comes from eating something I have made.

Plus, pizza is delicious, and I am trying to find a place of simplicity with it.

Here's a poem/prayer that's been very meaningful to me these past few months:

BakerWoman God
Bakerwoman God,
I am your living Bread.
Strong, brown, Bakerwoman God.
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf.

I am your rising bread,
well-kneaded by some divine and knotty pair of knuckles,
by your warm earth-hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.


Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
put me in your own bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard, brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.

Break me, Bakerwoman God!
I am broken under your caring Word.
Bakerwoman God,
Remake me.
Alla Bozarth-Campbell