Pizza Night!!!

When I was growing up, Friday night was always pizza night. I am not exactly sure why but I think it dates way back to when my parents were kids and some Italian Catholic tradition of not eating meat on Fridays. Occasionally we would actually make our own pizza's which was always my favorite. My mom would make the dough in a big sauce pot and I would stand across from her at the counter and watch her make the pizzas. As we got older, I would always ask for my own dough to make my own pizza, not sure why, I vaguely remember it being something with the sauce. My best memories are when my brother would make the pizza too and we would listen to Friday with Frank (Sinatra that is) and make pizza all night. Good times! It has been so cold here I thought it would be fun to make homemade pizza with Bella. I do not make my dough in a sauce pot, I use my kitchen aid...I just love making dough in that thing, it always comes out so good! I did not involve Bella in the dough making process because it takes a little while and you have to let it rise. But when it was time she was so ready to get started! Here is a pic of her placing the pepperoni on her pizza. She did not want sauce, I don't know why. Also please excuse my mail pile and she was also munching on some bologna while we were cooking!



This is what her pizza looked like before it went into the oven, not bad for a 4 year old. I pretty much shaped the dough but she kept it pretty good while she was rolling it out.


I decided to cook the pizza's on my pizza stone. Ideally I like to put the pizza stone on the grill and cook the pizzas in there. They come out awesome because the grill gets so hot. I tried to mock the grill atmosphere in my oven, by letting the pizza stone preheat while the dough was rising. Here is Bella's pizza cooking, for some reason when you use the stone, the dough just rises perfect!


Here is the final product. Her pizza came out delicious, I didn't even miss not having the sauce. I have also included a picture of what mine looked like, of course a much healthier version. The joys of watching what you eat. Mine was still delicious but it would have been nice to not have the measure the cheese, say no to pepperoni, and spread the dough out to make it as big as possible!


In all it was a really fun night and something I am going to try and do more often. I want Bella to have the same memories making pizza with me, like I did making pizza with my family!