How to Make Pizza

We are recording, and if any of you could please tweet it out, I would appreciate it. So I have a digital thermometer to check my water temperature. Let's see what we're at. And you don't want it too hot, but it's got to be in that sweet spot. And I need a cup and a third of water. We're getting there.

And you have some sugar?

Yes, I do. I have salt, sugar, olive oil, uh, That's it. And of course, yeast.

And you always have to watch that expiration date on the yeast. Yes.

And it's, you know, and don't keep it stored in your cupboard forever too, because, you know, it will— heat will kill it. All kinds of things will kill it. All right. So I have a cup and a third of water and that's going to go in here. Once we get this set, then we can move on and talk a little bit., and then I have a packet and I just happen to buy Red Star yeast. That's a good brand. Fleischmann's. I mean, there's a lot of nice brands out there and I put the yeast in here.

I love the smell. I love the smell of yeast.

I know it makes you anticipate some wonderful—

Yeah, it's like bready.

That or it makes you think of beer. So either way, true.

It's okay. It's all good.

It's all good. So I'm just gonna mix this in and let it get mixed up and then we're gonna let it sit for about 5 minutes. And make sure that it is active because this is your opportunity. Really didn't mix it up well. I have a wire whip here somewhere. Get in here, do it right. That's better. Nice milky. And you just want to let it sit 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and then we're ready to go. And making the pizza dough is like 10 minutes worth of work. You can do it in the morning, you can do it ahead of time, you could do it the day before. Get it to the stage where you're going to need to rewarm it. The only thing is, like, say you want pizza for dinner. We're going to make this pizza dough now, and I'm going to let it sit for a while. I'm going to let it do its initial rise, punch it down, and then I'm going to cut it up and get it ready for whatever size pizzas I want to make. And let me tell you right now, don't go trying to make freaking 18-inch pizzas, okay? Because you'll kill yourself.

I know, I'll tell you, living on Long Island I, it's like I default to doing these huge pizzas.

Well, it's all good.

Thank you.

All well and good if you have a peel and you get it on the peel, but then getting it off the peel, that's where we run into trouble.

So right.

You wanna do that. What, what you can do is the best way is to put it on parchment paper. You know, if you wanna try and make a bigger paper, put it on parchment paper and then transfer it on. Now, Once it settles and once it cooks a little, you can pull a parchment out of it if you want to open your oven. All right. I really don't even bother at that point if I'm going to put it on parchment. I do have pizza stones. I'm not using one today because it's outside in my grill and it's seen some wear and tear from the grill. So I'm just using a nice flat cookie sheet. I have the cookie sheet in the oven getting nice and hot because I want the surface to be hot. When I put the dough on.

Right, right.

Yeah, you know, I mean, sometimes they say to put the oven on the hottest setting for like an hour to heat the stone for an hour. I don't know why it has to heat for an hour, but—

Well, it takes a while for the stone to really hold that heat. So it's permeating, so it's really being, you know, and, you know, if you wanna go that route, that's fine. But, you know, honestly, it's not gonna make, in your oven, it's not gonna make that much difference. It is going to be a little different. The crust is going to be a little different, but it's not a deal breaker.

Yeah. Do you like a thin crust or a thicker crust?

I love a thin crust.

Well, you're from Philly, so I, you know, Philly, this thin crust, just like there is in New York, very thin.

The thinner, the better. You know, fold it. There's a proper way to eat it. It's just great that way. But, you know, I won't throw out a thick crust pizza either. Pizza's good no matter what kind of crust. I love a good Sicilian pie if the crust is nice, you know. Yeah, anything. So that's the yeast. Yeast is done, ready to go. So now I have my flour measured out, and I have right here, it's settled to about 3 1/4 cups. I actually weighed it, and I have 375, uh, is it grams? 370? No, 475 grams of flour.

And what kind of flour?

Now, this is all-purpose flour. You'll see some recipes that tell you to get that triple zero Italian flour, which is well, but I didn't want to use something you couldn't find in the grocery store. So I'm just using plain all-purpose flour.

Yeah, I've always used that.

Now, that being said, not all flours are created equal, even all-purpose.

All right.

I have anxiety.

Don't, because there's only one thing you have to change, and that's the amount of flour you put in, okay, or the amount of water. So I, it's easier to add flour than to add water, so I add flour. Now King Arthur's flour is what I use pretty much all the time when I'm not using a gluten-free flour, and it has got a higher percentage of protein in it. I think that's correct. So what that does is it, it makes it react differently when you add water in, and it changes the texture, it changes how it absorbs, you know, enough to make a recipe a little bit different. So don't go rushing out and buy it. Use whatever flour you always use, and that'll probably come out well for you. So Pillsbury, General Mills, store flour, just remember that the difference in it is going to be how much flour you're going to need to make this the right consistency.

It's such a science, you know. I mean, I don't know. I'm super picky about my crust. I figured if the crust isn't, isn't perfect, you know, the whole, the whole thing is compromised. The whole pizza's, you know, not as satisfying.

We've got salt. We've got 1/2 teaspoon of salt or 3/4 teaspoon of salt. I think it is. Tablespoon of sugar. And, you know, I didn't go buy sugar. I'm using the brown— I'm using the raw sugar. And I did it on the first one, came out fine. And then we're going to put in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. So it's salt, sugar, olive oil, flour, water, and yeast. And that's it. So then we just put this on and you put it on low. Trust me, put it on low to start because you don't want flour all over the kitchen, right? Using a dough hook. You could do this by hand. So if you don't have a mixer, just, you know, take your time. And, and I would take a spatula and stir it around and try and get it to form some kind of a semblance of a ball. And then you want to dump it out on a table and work it by hand a little bit more until it gets the right consistency.

Okay, so that's on low so that it doesn't get too elastic?

Well, so low so the flour doesn't go everywhere.

Oh, right, right.

Okay, pretty much. And I'm just— as it gets mixed up, and I, I like to pick the roll up a little bit to get it to get in all the edges. And then as I look at it, it's going to start to form a ball around the hook, and this is when I decide that I need a little more flour or not. And it'll start incorporating the flour, and that's plenty because I— my first batch I had to up it by about a quarter of a cup, so I already adjusted this to it to be— it was like I said, 475 grams or the amount of water I put in. And then I'm just going to let it mix up a little bit. And it's, it's got a nice tight ball on the dough hook, which is what I want. It's good. And the way you want to check it for elasticity is when you pull it up, if you push in it and it's not elastic enough and it bounces right back, it's done.

Okay.

Oh, and Michael is wishing us happy chocolate day.

Oh, yay! I will celebrate.

I know, it's any reason to celebrate chocolate. We actually had some new friends come over last night and we had wine and they brought us chocolate.

Do you have any chocolate to put on the pizza?

No, we're not making a breakfast, but chocolate. Okay, well, you can— speaking of, you can make a breakfast pizza. I'm gonna add just a pinch more flour. It's just sticking a little bit on the bottom. And again, it's, you know, it's not going to kill it. You just don't want to put so much in that it dries it out. And then you want to watch it enough. It shouldn't take more than about 7 minutes. It can take less than that. And you want to get it to the point again where you're pushing.

Oh, that looks, that looks good.

Almost, right? Just a little bit longer. And so at that point, what we're going to do We're going to get a bowl and we're going to put a little bit of olive oil in it and coat the bowl. You guys can't really see that right now, but I will move it over.

No, I can see it. Yep.

Okay, just coat the bowl a little bit and then I'm going to dump the, uh, dough in there. Yeah, good. Nice elasticity to it. So I'm going to take it right off the hook. I'm just going to grab—

I mean, could you, if you felt you needed a bit more flour at this point, could you do some kneading?

You could just put a little on your hand and, you know, if you want to make it kind of kneaded in. Yeah, just All right, so just roll it up, and you don't want to work it any more than you have to. So I'm just going to make a little ball out of it. I'm going to sit in here where I had some oil. I'm just going to get it around, get it wet again. And now I'm going to put it over near, near the heat, out of a draft, with a towel covered over top of it. All right, so that's going to be— let me wash this dough off my hands a little bit. So that's your pizza. I mean, easy, right?

It is.

Anybody have any questions on that? Or it is.

Well, now, now, how, how long will, will it rise?

Well, it's going to at least double, and I was surprised at how fast this did rise. So the yeast is pretty good. It rose really quick. It rose very nicely. And like I said, it surprised me how fast and how well it did. I'm just getting the rest.

Can you speed it up and by putting it in, say, a 175-degree oven or something?

I wouldn't. I think you're flirting with disaster.

Oh, yeah.

The only other thing I would do, like when I wanted to rush something, was I would put it on top of the oven, the stove, and I would cover it with a bowl, with a metal bowl to really trap some more heat in it.

Mm-hmm.

But you know, it's—

it—

that initial rise is important to how the pizza is going to come out. So you really don't want to fool with it too much. I mean, you can if you had a proofing cabinet. A proofing cabinet's a little more trustworthy than an oven. That's, that's kind of why, you know, I, I don't want regular people fooling around with it. So this was the second.

Oh, Wow, that looks amazing.

All right, well, these rose again about at least half more, and I cut this down. This was what this recipe made, and I cut it into 3 sections.

All right, did you, did you punch it down yet?

Punch? Yeah, it's already been punched. Okay, ready to go. So now I'm going to flour my hands a little bit, and I'm going to grab one of these, and we're going to make a pizza.

Okay, and let me know when you want me to do my demonstration.

So I do have a paper. Let me move it. Of course it slid out of the way. I have a piece of parchment down and all I'm going to do at this point is add a little flour to my hands just so it doesn't stick. And I'm going to roll it a little bit into a ball again. And I've seen people use rolling pins. I really don't like it, but there's nothing wrong with it. So at this point, I'm just going to pat it down, and then we'll see how Susan, how a real pizza maker does it.

Yeah, well, so far we're one for one because I don't use a rolling pin either. I never did.

They used to make us use it when I worked in food service, and then they had this little thing you'd run over that poked holes in it too, which is kind of silly. But the only real trick that this person taught me about making pizzas was before you start to stretch it, she would make an edge on the pizza. Okay, so we would just work around it and make, make your little crust. And you don't want to overuse flour because then it's going to be floury. Yeah, you just want to put enough on it. You know, I know it helps and it's easier, but don't get crazy with your flour.

But isn't the crust the best part?

Absolutely. You would do that and then start to stretch. And of course, you know, to get it going, you just wanna kind of flatten it to get it big enough to stretch.

Good technique, good.

And you can kind of, let me back this camera up so you can. Yeah, yeah. All right.

There we go.

I'm gonna drop it down a little bit too. That's not too much. There we go. Okay, so once I get it in, I'm just going to put a little bit more flour on my hand because it's stuck sitting there. All right, I'm going to kind of get my knuckles under it and pull with my knuckles. You don't want to pull with your fingers because you'll poke holes. So as I'm pulling with my knuckles underneath of it like this, I'm stretching it out. All right, and then once it gets to about an area where it's stretched, this is simply just kind of a working around in a circle until you get it about where you want. And don't worry about it being perfectly round. It's, it's a pizza. I like to refer to it as rustic. And when I first started them, they were all— that's right, they were all football-shaped pizzas.

It's true, it looks even better when it's, it's you know, a different shape.

So, you know, this is basically it, making the crust again. And you can make it a little round. You don't have— once it's down here, you don't have to pick it up. If you wanted to, just turn it back over on your hand and put a little cornmeal down, only because it makes it look kind of cool, makes you really look like you, you know what you're doing. And then it'll slide a little too. All right, so —get that. I do have a pizza peel and it is a nice— and again, it's nice to have. It makes life a little easier than— that's a big one.

Yeah, you need a pizza peel. They're not that expensive.

All right, so here is my one real tip. If you want to make it semi-round, you can. And you know, it's nice to make them a little smaller because then they can be individual and you can have a little party. People can make their pizzas, pop them in the oven, and they can put what they want on.

That's right. Put out all the toppings. Yeah. You know, and then just make it a DIY.

DIY. Now here's where a lot of people falter by using way too much sauce. Yes, I'm guilty. I am too, because I like sauce. Yeah. You have to be kind of careful. You're right. And you should be able to see, and you notice I'm putting it on with a spoon simply because we used to use a ladle at work. We'd put a ladle on and take the ladle and just work it around. In Ocean City, they have a place called Max's, which has kind of gone downhill, unfortunately. But they used to have a hose and they would put it on with a hose. Oh my God.

Well, let me ask you this. Let me, let me just ask you real quick because I've always been guilty of putting on too much sauce. Do you think that might have had to do with my crust being too tough?

Not the crust being tough, but it would be wet and it would be soggy. That your crust will be tough from overmixing it, from just working the dough too much.

Okay, 'cause that's such an important tip right there.

I mean, everything you're saying is really right on. So I'm actually making a cheddar pizza 'cause this is my lunch and I want some cheddar on it, but you can use, and I did this so you could see, you can use any kind of cheese. I also have a little garlic herb cheese that they sent me, which is a cheddar mix. So I'm putting that— I'm not putting any meat on it. I was going to put some pepperoni on it, but I'm just going to keep it cheese today. And then I also have some blue cheese.

Okay, I have a question. So say you want mushrooms or peppers on it, you know, vegetables that will release some water. Do you sauté the mushrooms first? Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. And if you don't want to do that, just buy some canned mushrooms then. But I mean, you're a lot better off just sautéing them. You want to— anything that's going to emit a liquid, you want to get some of that liquid out of it because it's going to make a mess. And the more you put on your pizza, the harder it's going to be if you were just shaking it off the peel. And the longer you leave it sit here, the harder it's going to be getting it off. So this is why the, uh, using the paper helps. The parchment paper helps. Easy just to slide right off. Now here's one last thing. If If you have time and want to be extra special, just take a little olive oil on the crust and make up a little— your favorite seasoning mixture. It can be spicy, it can be whatever you want it to be. You don't want too much oil. I got a little bit too much there. I want it to be wet. And then take some seasoning, and I have garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano. Mixed together, and I'm just going to season up the outer edge of this crust.

Is that, is that, um, fresh garlic or powdered garlic?

Granny Lady. Yeah, not fresh. Granny Lady garlic. You can put a little cheese in it if you want. You could put some crushed red pepper in it if you want. Fancy. So now this extra crust that everybody throws away—

you're right—

gonna be too tasty to throw away.

I am blown away. I mean, this isn't just pizza. This is I, you know, amazing. Such simple tips that are, that just transform, transform it.

Right off, no problem because I had the paper. So no muss, no fuss. And I have 2 more dough balls here that I'll put away later. And so if you want to show us yours.

I do. Yes. So, so like I told Chef, everyone, when I was a teenager, I, I I worked in this Italian restaurant. The owner would go home and I'd be left making the pizzas and actually being a cook as well. And I did that for a few years. So here we go. I have a table over here. Woo-hoo! Yep, see, I'm all set. And here's my dough that I got from the Italian.

And you know, there is no harm in doing that. Most grocery stores sell pizza dough now. Don't make life any more difficult than you have.

So here I'm gonna put some flour on the table and take out the dough real quick. Just get it a little so it's not so moist. And then right away, now Chef, you made your kind of crust. I never do it, you know, I may start like this, patting it down. Like, like this, which, you know, similar. And then I begin and I do it. I put more of my fist into it than you do. But again, I do, and it makes it natural. I find that when I end up in here, an inch or so in here. Oh, this is a Tommy Train decal from my 3-year-old granddaughter.

So there we go. Yeah.

So then I simply go like, and I do spread my knuckles a little bit sometimes. I'll just, you know, same basic technique, same basic technique, but I put a little more of my—

you have a bigger dough there too. It is a bigger dough. That was part of the problem with using a smaller dough. You can't really get into it as well when you have a nice big dough like that. Yeah, got lots of room to work on it.

So yeah, and I go all around as evenly as I can and I try to see through the dough because I like it thin.

Now, did you let that warm up before you worked on it?

It's, it's cool. It's cold. It's out of the refrigerator about 20 minutes.

Okay, so not a long time. Nope. So again, that's beautiful.

So now let me tell you what I do next. Then I'll put it down here. And actually, what I was taught to do, similar to you, is I'll put some cornmeal, a little bit of flour on the peel. I have both a metal and a wood peel. And then here's some cornmeal and I'll just sprinkle it on here because that for me is what brings the pizza in and out more easily. Oh my God, yeah. So here we go. A little bit of the crust. And then I will fill it and let me see. Take the feet. Yeah, there we go.

Kind of.

There we go. Sorry about that. There we go. So then I'll just fill it on top. And that's it. And hopefully, it's super thin. It looks like on the inside. And, you know, that's what I'm looking to do.

Perfect. You made a nice bagel.

I know I did. Now I'm having— I'll have it for lunch.

Yeah, that's, that's great. Now, you know, there's nothing wrong with doing that, but, you know, try, be patient with your first few and it's okay to make them a little smaller. It's okay to make them, you know, more individual-sized pizzas until you really master that technique down. Then go, you know, go all for it and make them however big you want. Easy to do different toppings. Yes. If you want to put a lot of toppings on it, let's say like you were asking me about cooking mushrooms and cooking peppers and putting those different kinds of toppings on it. You can put sausage, you can put bacon. If you want to really make it a heavy, heavy pizza, you want to let it cook a little first. Put whatever your basic topping on, maybe just the cheese and 1 or 2 toppings, and pull it out after the crust is cooked a little. Add your additional toppings and then put it back in. Okay. For the second— Okay. Because with all that stuff on it, sometimes it's gonna cook a little different. It's gonna get naturally soggy by what's gonna drain into it. So you wanna let it cook up a little bit first and then put the rest of them on. So like when you go to a pizza place and you want their Super Supreme pizza that's got everything they got back there on it, that's what they do. It'll maybe get one or two toppings, it goes in the oven, then they'll pull it out and then they'll dress it with everything else, put it back in, put a little more cheese on it. Yeah. Put it back.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, no, I mean, the possibilities are endless. And you know what else is nice? Have you heard of a Four Seasons pizza? No. Four Seasons. Oh, well, what'd you do? I think it's actually popular in Europe, but you split it. You don't split it. It's a round circle and you put toppings in quarters. So you have summer, winter, spring, and fall, different types of toppings. It may be mushrooms for I don't know if that's for either spring or fall, something summery, maybe like squash or tomatoes and kind of have a theme, you know, and it looks pretty, too.

The best pizza I ever had was in Nice and it was a 4 fromages and I have tried to recreate that everywhere I go. Really? But it was mozzarella, goat cheese. What the heck else? Well, it was Roquefort. I forget what the fourth cheese was. Oh, buffalo mozzarella. Buffalo, fresh mozzarella, regular mozzarella, goat cheese, and Roquefort. And when you bit it, it bit back. I mean, the Roquefort was, oh my God, wonderful. And I've ordered it in different places and it's never quite had that impact on me.

But that's one of my favorite cheeses. And I prefer Danish blue cheese, which has a lot of bite to it. And but what would I pick? If I want a blue cheese pizza, what would I pair it with?

To— you mean what else to eat with it? No, no, no.

I mean, what else on the pizza?

I would just put, you know, some other cheeses with it. You could put, you know, you could actually put apples or pears on it. Since you said pear, they'll go good. Some arugula. And these are things you put on, like, say you want to put arugula on it when it comes out. Put some arugula on it, then cut it up. Okay, if you're gonna make a margherita, you know, put your fresh mozzarella when it comes out, put the basil on it. Anytime you're gonna add like a green or something to it, put it on after it comes out, then cut it. Okay, you know, a blue cheese, a Danish blue cheese, you don't want to put too much on it to take flavor away, right? That's true. A regular pizza and have some of those on, or make yourself a buffalo chicken pizza with your Danish blue and go.

Yes. Yeah, I know that could work.

Just about ready. And it looks marvelous. Nice. Very long to cook.

What did you have? Did you have it up to like 500?

I have it on 480. Okay. I didn't quite push it all the way. I've gone between 450 and 500 in that range when I make bread. It's the same thing. If it was a professional oven, I would have had it at 550.

Probably. Okay. Okay. But you have to really preheat it. I mean, I'm sure you preheated that for a while.

It was on for half an hour. Okay. And it beeps well before we started. And the other thing that's important, if you ever have an opportunity, don't go out and buy it. But if you ever have an opportunity, get an oven thermometer and see how hot your oven really is, because a lot of times the oven temperature doesn't match what it says it is. You know, most ovens aren't calibrated real, real well, so that could be the reason why some of your recipes don't quite come out first go-around with what's suggested.

Now let me ask you real quick, um, a convection oven— I love cooking with convection oven— is that good for cooking with a pizza?

I think so.

Oh.

Wow. Even the paper being brown looks good.

That's the secret weapon, is because I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get it in the oven, and then it goes all over the place.

See how nice that crust is? Great. It's more crust than you want, but I seasoned it so nicely. And I don't want to lose it, but I'm going to try Wow. I can't really— I'll cut it and I'll let you see. Yeah. Because the bottom is perfect. But you know what?

You made the crust its own part of the whole. You've made the crust, meaning the seasonings you put on it, which I've never even seen before, but it's brilliant.

Oh, it's delicious. And then, you know, if you wanted to, halfway through, you could take a little cheese and you could put it on the edges so it melted in a little bit. Or grated cheese in here would also give it some look. A little crushed pepper, like I said, gives it a little heat. So, and you know, I had a friend that used to precook all her doughs a little bit. She wouldn't put anything on them and she would brush the whole pizza, put it in the oven, bring it out when it had cooked a little bit, then put the sauce on and everything. And they were really kind of nice that way.

Wow. Huh. So like a partial cooking.

Yeah. Yeah. And then like we used to make a lot of pizzas for lunch. This was at school. She's the one that taught me about putting the seasoning on them. But she would bake off, you know, 10, 12 doughs, have them ready and then top them. And then we'd do a party and we'd have to come up with 40 pizzas. So every day she would par-bake, you know, 4 extra doughs or 5 extra doughs. So when that day came, she just pulled them all out of the freezer. Yeah. So you could do that as well if you had a freezer. You could parcook your doughs, pop them in the freezer. Why buy a frozen pizza if you can do this? Oh yeah.

Yeah, that looks wonderful. It looks fantastic. I love the crust.

It's a little oilier because I have used cheddar instead of mozzarella.

Crispy, super crispy. I can hear the crisp of it. Okay, I'm impressed.

All right, let's see if I can show you. I'm going to get a piece that isn't too runny. Yes. Nice. See that crust? Yep. Nice. And I'm— it would burn the roof of my mouth off severely, or I would eat it right now. And I'm jonesing for it, but yeah, I bet the hard way. Too many. I know. So we have a nice crust. It's nice. It's— we'll see. I don't think it's going to be real chewy. Best part. Mm-hmm. Very nice.

Oh, you know, I was going to ask you a question way before and I forgot. When you're doing your dough and say you do a bunch of them, can you freeze?

Can you freeze them? Dough freezes. Raw dough freezes. That's not a problem because we would buy at the school, we would buy premade dough sometimes and they were frozen balls of dough. Okay. Well, my thought is you want to let it proof the first time, break it down into whatever size you want. Make nice-sized balls out of it and then put them on a tray, put them on parchment paper. You need a big enough area to freeze them and let them freeze solid, then put them in Ziplocs or something.

Okay. Okay.

And then take it out. Let it thaw in your refrigerator. Bring it out of your refrigerator and let it rise again.

And then let it rise again. Okay. All right. Great. Boy, you need a— you need a glass of Chianti there.

I know, and some fava beans.

That looks—

anybody wants to jump in and say hi, please feel free now. Seat's open. That was pretty good. Nominee. Wow.

Looks great. Looks great. Yeah, I know I could have pizza every single day. I really could.

This is a nice tender crust. And again, you know, I didn't overwork it. And that's always a big thing. That's right.

And you know what's nice too? I like crumbled sausage on it rather than, you know, sliced. I like it. I don't know. I like crumbled all over it and mushrooms.

It's easier to eat. You want to think about eating and how it's easier. One of the best pizzas I had, the owner, I told you, that pizza place I worked at, Her father made a spaghetti and meatball pizza. Wow. I look crazy. And I— and he's just smiling. I ate it. I went, oh my God.

Jennifer, how you doing? Hi, Jennifer.

Can you hear us? We can see you now. We can't hear you though.

All right, there you are. Hi there. Hey, hey, Chef, you remember me? You were on my show a couple weeks ago. Road to Well-Being. I remember. It's good to see you. Good seeing you. I thought I would watch your pizza making today. I have a question. When you made your dough, could you flavor it with herbs and spices? Absolutely.

Okay, good question. I would do it. I would do it after the rise. Or put it in, you know, I've never put it directly in the water, but you could probably put it right in the water. Water when you're making the dough too.

Okay. So have you tried it with almond flour ever instead of all-purpose?

I have not made a gluten-free pizza yet, so I don't know how that'll work. I was going to, and then I stopped being completely gluten-free before I got to it. Now I'm just gluten kind of intolerant, and you know, when I it's in front of me, I eat it, but I just try not to, so.

Right, right. Well, one of these days we'll have to try it because I'd be interested. I've changed some recipes with almond flour and have enjoyed it. I have a really great salt bread that I like, and I've tried it with almond flour and it was okay. It wasn't as good, but I think like you said earlier, it probably needed some more moisture. It was kind of dry. Maybe more butter and water with the almond flour. So, um, yeah.

Did you make, um, did you make like a flatbread out? Did it rise? Do you use yeast in it?

I used yeast. Yeah, it was actually— it's a pretzel dough recipe, but I make, um, a circular braid out of it instead of individual pretzels.

Well, you know, if you can roll it out, if you can flatten it out, you can make a pizza on it. It doesn't have to be— you know, that, that's another thing. If you can make a dough that'll get a rise and you can flatten it out and put put sauce and cheese on it. It's a pizza. Doesn't have to be.

That's true. I never thought of it that way.

Yeah.

Or focaccia, you know, or make a nice focaccia out of it, leave it thicker. The trick to doing a Sicilian was always like getting the dough big enough. And it was when we did it at the pizza place, it was always like get 2 doughs. So that's how thick it would be. And then they'd make it in a sheet pan, like a half a sheet pan. So then you'd want to make a, get a good coat of oil, olive oil, on the bottom of that sheet pan because that's what's going to really cook and flavor the bottom of the crust. So that's going to help like almost fry it a little bit when it's in the oven and get the bottom of the crust on the sheet pan a little bit better.

Right. Actually, I saw something on— I don't know if it was Facebook or YouTube— where when you have leftover pizza, the best way to warm it up is throw it in a sauté pan instead of sticking it in the microwave because it crusts up the Really? Yeah.

Wow, I've never heard of that.

Never in the microwave. That's— I, I do have one. That's true. It's for coffee and popcorn. That's it. And I've even stopped putting popcorn in it.

Um, another thing I do with my kids is I'll buy like garlic bread and then turn it into pizza. Yeah, and they really like that too.

We used to do a lot of French bread pizza, and we would get those French bread, um, We would make it ourselves, but you could also get those little, you know, just a loaf of French bread and do it right on that. You don't have to do anything else except get it, coat it with some garlic oil or something, like you said, a garlic bread, and then just make pizza out of it. People love pizza made out of different things. Like, we do pizza bagels. We'd have all these leftover bagels. Oh, let's make pizza bagels. It's time to make pizza bagels.

Yeah, but sometimes, you know, you just, you just don't think of it, you know, it's so good if you can think a little bit broader than the one note, you know, the one note meals, the one note. Yeah.

And even a breakfast pizza. I started to talk about that, you know, eggs, bacon, cheese, whatever you want on it, make it, you know, for breakfast. We've done those. We've seen those in places, but nothing beats a good, you know, a good pie.

I wonder, we talked about Dennis Littley on our show doing, taking a muffin pan and doing like egg biscuit muffins for breakfast, you know, and freezing them. I mean, I wonder if you could take a little bit of that dough and put it in each muffin pan. Absolutely. And then add your egg and stuff and then bake it and then freeze it and then you can just warm it up in the morning.

I would think about maybe baking them ahead of time.

Baking them, okay. —then putting— Oh yes, yeah, cooking them first and then freezing them. And then in the morning you're just warming.

Right, make your own, make your own little pizza cup, breakfast cup. There's something you can do, and the dough is versatile. And even making garlic sticks out of the dough is fine. You know, cut it into slices, twist them, and coat them with oil like I did in seasonings, and pop them in the oven. You have your own breadsticks that Right, did you use olive oil when you were coating? Yeah, extra virgin, it's all that, and I do have corn oil for other baking and/or frying, and I have avocado oil too, coconut oil.

Right, when would you use extra virgin olive oil or just olive oil? What's the difference?

I only buy extra virgin, and I don't buy anything other than extra virgin. It's not really that much cheaper. And the purity, the content of items that are allowed in like a pure olive oil or just a virgin olive oil or not. I really don't want to take a chance on getting something that's partially rancid. Pure olive oil can have a little certain percent of rancidity in it.

Okay, I didn't know that.

So, you know, extra virgin, and then you don't have to say, well, which olive oil do I have? Now, if you're buying a really, really good olive oil, uh, you know, a, um, at a store that sells from different regions of Italy, because you can taste olive oil like you would taste the wine. So if you're buying something that's really nice, definitely don't use it for everyday olive oil use. And I always tell people, like, if you're having a pasta, use it to finish your pasta dish. Once your pasta is plated, if you want to drizzle, now is when you drizzle. Now is when you drizzle the real expensive or the good olive oil. Never cook with anything you don't have to cook with anything that expensive because you're going to lose the flavor when you cook it.

So would you drizzle that on the pizza after it comes out? I don't think it needs more oil.

Oh, okay. But if you were eating bread, I would have the good olive oil to dip the bread in that. Or if you, if you wanted something to dip the crust in instead of like, was it one of the pizza places used to give you like those butter packets or something? Who didn't love that? But I mean, you didn't think about the implications of what you were eating, right? Right.

Well, thank you for having me on. I'm gonna go. You guys have a great rest of your show. Thank you.

Thanks for stopping. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Bye. Now Michael's saying he's used corn flour as a substitute before. That's pretty cool. And Michael, you know, anytime you ever want to join us, you have an open seat, my friend. And anytime I can do anything for you, or you want to do a show, just— you just tell me when and where, and I'll be there. You've been such a great supporter all through this, so we do appreciate it. But that's all I have for today. Susan, anything else? Gonna go make your pizza?

I sure am. I can't wait, actually. I'm dying to go make it.

I know, I'm dying to eat the rest of this. My stomach's growling. I know.

So, and I'm going to put something all around my crust, which I've never done before. So I'm so excited. This is a great show. All right.

I'll see you all next week. I think we start our Thanksgiving prep for next week. So join us Tuesday and Wednesday as we start getting you ready for Thanksgiving. Yep. Thanks for coming. Bye.