It is the fourth Sunday of July. That two week break from making pizzas ended up being two months instead. Time can really fly during the summer where a lot is going on. I asked Niles if he was free this weekend. He was, so that means it is pizza time. Ken mentioned that he was also planning to make some pizza this weekend. I told him he should just come on over for Sunday pizza day instead.

I prepared enough dough for six pizzas which is the 1,000 g recipe. I also made some sauce and used sugar instead of honey so that it would be vegan friendly for Ken. I did read the wrong line when adding the black pepper. The recipe called for ¼ of a teaspoon but I added in ½ instead. Niles always says I need to add more black pepper so I figured he would like this mistake. I tasted it and it seemed fine to me. I bought some Ledo sauce as a backup just in case the flavor intensified too much overnight. Its more than just a backup. I’ll be using that on pasta this week.

We got started at around noon and the main cheese for the day was whole milk mozzarella. I normally use the skim milk one, and I had intended to use that today, but I accidentally picked up the wrong one. The whole milk ends up tasting better but it browns differently and doesn’t have that cheap pizza feel.

The dough was looking great after sitting covered for two hours:

The first pizza is always cheese and this is how it looked before going in the oven:

I thought this was stretched out well and had a nice and even shape to it. Well, it wasn’t as big as I thought and it wasn’t as round as I thought either:

I’m back using the blend with 100 g of mozzarella, 10 g of cheddar, and 10 g of monterey jack. The only issue with this combo is that there is some separation and it tends to pool at the lowest point of the pizza. I think it is the cheddar that is doing that. This may not have been the most beautiful pizza that I’ve made, but it did taste really good. Terri even liked it which is saying something. She says I should use the whole milk cheese from now on. The sauce ended up being fine. I didn’t really notice the extra black pepper. The underbelly could have been cooked more but it was baked well all the way through.

The second pizza was a vegan cheese one for Ken. He brought over this cheese made from cashew milk:

Ken said that the secret to shredding this kind of cheese was to have it slightly frozen so that it behaves well. After he was done shredding, the cheese looked like this:

To me, that looked quite similar to real cheese. We dressed up the pizza and it was ready for the oven looking like this:

This pizza stayed in the oven for the full eight minutes and came out looking decent:

I didn’t manage to have a slice of this vegan pizza but Terri said that the flavor was actually good but the mouthfeel was a bit off. At this point, it was time for a group photo:

Zach and Zach were here too so it was time for a pepperoni pizza. A request was made to nuke the pepperoni first to pull out some of the juice. I placed the pepperoni on a paper towel on a paper plate:

After fifteen seconds in the microwave, they were then placed on the pizza. You can see all the pepperoni juice that was left behind.

This one baked up in seven minutes. The cheese was molten enough where the pepperoni slid towards the center of the pie:

I honestly don’t know how some of those moved so far. For the next pizza, I nuked the pepperoni, had them ready, and completely forgot to put them on the pizza. I waited until the four minute rotation, pulled the pizza out, and added the pepperoni at that time. These ended up being more evenly distributed in the final product:

These pizzas were tasting great and people were eating them up faster than I could make them. The next dough ball, I stretched it out too thin in the center and realized it wouldn’t make a good pizza. So, it was time for some garlic sticks. I brushed on a bit of olive oil and then sprinkled on some garlic salt. I placed these on the other stone at the very bottom of the oven. I then got distracted while making the next pizza and these were in a bit too long:

The really burnt spot is where I stretched it out too much. When that part was cut away, there was still enough breadsticks to go around. I didn’t have any but I heard they were good. There were no leftovers. For next time, I need to make sure to pop as many bubbles as I can before these go in.

One more dough ball left and we kept rolling with the pepperoni. I did the same technique from the previous pizza but put this one on the lower stone instead. The oven light is out so I cannot see its progress until I open the oven door. This was probably stayed in a bit too long but Niles and Zach were excited about the extra crispiness and char:

There were no slices left behind so it all worked out well. That bottom stone really heated up. I need to start putting my primary stone down there instead.

Anyway, the pizza schedule used to be Sundays when nothing else is going on and for much of the previous year there was a lot of nothing going on. Things are now starting to pick up again so we are going to change the schedule to be about once per month. It could always be more. If there is pizza to be made, I’ll be writing up the experience.