It is the second Sunday of March. It is also Pi Day. Making a pizza pie is a great way to celebrate Pi Day. I’ve also generated a million images, each 16 by 16 pixels, using the digits of pi. I don’t think I’m going to have time to go through all million of them today.

Niles was down on the Eastern Shore last weekend. He stopped by Ponzetti’s on the way home, picked up a few partial bakes, and said we should do a side-by-side tasting today. I made the dough yesterday using shortening for the fat. This time I melted it down and added it once the dough had combined. I again got lazy and used the stand mixer for kneading but this time for five minutes instead of ten.

We started at 11:30 today because Niles had to be somewhere at 1pm. With the time change, everything seemed off today. I slept in until 8am, but that was actually 9am. I took a shower and it was already time to pull the dough out of the fridge. I weighed out three balls at 280g each, covered them on the counter, and then toasted some English Muffins for a light breakfast.

Opening the Ponzetti’s box is like opening a treasure chest:

We decided to bake a homemade pizza at the same time as the partial bake for a true side-by-site taste test. For the first pizza, we put the cheese down first which was 80 g of mozzarella and went for 20 g of colby jack. I then put on the Don Pepino’s sauce in dollops.

The partial bake went on the middle rack while the homemade one went on the bottom. The partial was done first but not by much:

And now for the side-by-side taste test:

The Ponzetti’s pizza didn’t disappoint and it was as delicious as ever. It became apparent that I put too much sauce on the other pizza as it was overpowering at times. The Ponzetti’s sauce has something different going on in it but we aren’t sure what it is. I think it has more basil than the Pepino’s has straight out of the can. The cheese also has a nice distinct flavor that we cannot yet determine what it is. The dough was also quite thick for some reason. I must not have stretched it enough. In the picture it didn’t get out to the full size of the pan.

We weren’t terribly hungry today so we made one more pizza and called it quits after that. I used a rolling pin this time around to flatten the dough out even more. I also increased the colby jack ratio to get a better feel for its taste on a pizza. No dollops this time. I did the normal thing and put the sauce on first. The pizza was a bit bigger this time but it lost its circular shape:

This one had too much colby jack. In certain bites it would taste good but in others it would be too much. I sprinkled on some additional basil after putting down the sauce but I didn’t notice a big difference. We are on the right path for this pizza but there is still a way to go in getting it right.

When the first two pizzas came out we opened two bottles of birch beer. I had placed them in the freezer for a quick chill but it ended up being too long. A lot of liquid turned to ice and it fizzed up upon opening. I ran to the sink with mine as it was fizzing and then dropped the bottle cap in the garbage disposal. I tried fishing it out. It was being stubborn, pizza was getting cold, so I let it be. I then totally forgot about it until Niles reminded me after I dumped the leftover cheese in:

It took some time but I was able to finally pull it out:

Anyway, I’ll be taking a two week spring break from making pizzas and will start back up again in April. I won’t be taking a break from eating pizzas. That would just be silly.