Pi day post?
Pizza Hut had been serving us adequately for a minute, but when it was time to cash in the free large pizza, there was something seriously wrong with it. Like the pineapples had been shipped in antifreeze, I don’t fucking know. It’s not like me to throw out leftover pizza but that wasn’t cool. I used to work at that Pizza Hut. Top Ten Anime Betrayals, in the parlance of our times.
So we decided to do a homemade pizza to make up for it. Since I was a young adult and first able to customize my toppings, I’ve favored pepperoni, black olive, and pineapple. We did this. It turned out quite nice. I would have preferred real pepperoni, but the fake kind weren’t too offensive. I wonder that there might be a way to get them crispier, like pan fried for a moment? But let’s just describe this recipe as it happened. First draft was good enough.
Ingredients
Wad of uncooked pizza dough from WinCo deli area, idk, like a pound?
Pinch of flour.
Half a bottle of Botticelli brand Vodka Spaghetti Sauce.
Shredded mozzarella cheese, maybe 12 to 15 ounces.
Maybe a third of a bag of Trader Joes Vegan Pepperoni.
One small can of black olives, two-ish ounces.
A lil less than half a small can of pineapple chunks, three-ish ounces.
Maybe a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise.
Trader Joes Aglio Olio seasoning.
Garlic Salt.
Tools
Oven.
Very broad cookie sheet or pizza sheet.
Ladle, any material.
Smallish spoon.
Oven mitt or two depending on if you’re strong enough to one hand it.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. I got that instruction off the pizza dough package and it worked well.
I put a lil flour on the cooking sheet, probably cold have done a bit more. This helps it come off the sheet without sticking, and I did lose a wee bit of crust on there. When stretching the dough, ideally the side facing down will have just enough flour to easily come free, but not enough to be noticeable on the end product.
Stretch that dough. Spin it, roll it, smush it with your hands, but be mindful to aim for an even thickness, avoid areas too thin. Make it thinner than you might imagine; it will puff up. I didn’t know if I was making it too thin, but it ended up being just right, flattened to about one foot diameter.
Pizza sauce. Any tomato sauce is probably fine. I think this is usually marinara, and that might have come off more classically pizza-ish than my vodka sauce, but I’d sweeten marinara a bit. I find it too bitter sometimes. The biggest risk of a pizza is that our natural tendency is to plop all ingredients in the middle, then smooth them out – resulting in a thicker pile at the center, which is the most likely spot to not cook thoroughly. Doughy pizza fucking sucks. The sauce is the first ingredient where you want to think about this, but the same principle applies to all layers: Try to distribute all toppings evenly, but let them be thinnest in the middle. Use the bottom of a ladle to push it around.
Mozzarella. Buy shredded if you don’t want to be cooking for hours and hours. I made this whole recipe in maybe a lil over a half hour; shredding would have added several minutes. On that even distribution principle, I’d pour it in kind of a donut shape, breaking it up as I drop it onto the pizza with one hand. Same as before, have some in the middle but not as thick. Regarding mozzarella, you know practically no franchise pizza place uses pure mozz anymore? They all used to have mozzarella, so now when you taste a slice with a reasonably thick amount of the stuff, it’s nostalgia city. It’s not the most remarkable taste, but it feels gourmet when the most recent pie you had before this one was botched fast food. So good I had to write about it. Use mozzarella or don’t even bother.
Vegan pepperoni. Leave some space between them to put on your other ingredients. The pepperoni should be reasonably clear on top of each slice, for reasons I’ll get to later, so don’t bury them.
Sliced black olives. Like the shredding, it ain’t worth it to do your own slicing. Pat them dry with paper towel, or a thin non- terry cloth dish towel if you wanna be environmentally conscious but not leave lint all over your pizza. Distribute between the pepperonis.
Pineapple chunks. I was hoping to get the thinner slices like they have on most fast food pizza, but most of the cans have thick chunks. Do avoid crushed. The big rings could get sloppy too. I took the thick chunks and sliced them into thirds, so they’d have a similar thickness to the olives and not come off more dominant in the final taste. Even more important than the olives to dry these. A lot of fluid on the pizza risks doughiness, and this flavor is better in little bursts rather than suffusing the whole with a vague fruitiness.
Mayonnaise! Vegan pepperoni are de-vegan’d but much improved by wiping a thin bit of mayo on top of each slice! More convincingly pepperoni-oid, tastes more tolerable. I also put a thin bit of mayo all around the outside of the crust, to help seasonings adhere to it, and make it richer. This isn’t mayo as thick white condiment; it’s mayo as a more easily controlled and thin layer of cooking oil. Again, bottom of a ladle is a good tool, but for tighter control I used the bottom of a spoon.
Sprinkle the aglio olio on the pizza’s topping area.
Sprinkle the garlic salt on the outer crust only.
I forgot to, but putting a very thin amount of mozz on top could help hold it all together.
Cook for twenty minutes. Outer crust should be golden brown, the center might look squishy but that’s the melted cheese. If you did everything right, it should not be doughy. Serve immediately. Might burn an incautious mouth, but the outer crust in particular gets less nice fast when it cools.
It’s a shame this takes so much work, but it will taste great. It makes Pizza Hut look like grotty scumbags slingin’ reheated garbage out of the back of a rusty white van in rural Arkansas. They have a pizza oven; I don’t. They should be able to make something so much better, but crapitalism gotta max that profit at the expense of quality, every time.
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I wonder whether you could sub olive oil for mayo? We don’t keep mayo in the house.
instead of applying the oil after you put the pepps on the pizza, i’d make a lil dipping dish of it, and individually wet them before putting them on wet side up. then if u had an appropriate brush type thing, brush it on the outer crust.
i heard olive oil is more prone to burning in the oven, so maybe another cooking oil would be better? but i’ve never personally had that happen?
this could be a chance to add another flavor. mix a tiny drop of teriyaki or barbecue or ketchup into the dipping oil. very tiny, like the size of a pea.
Now I’m hungry. Must make dinner.
We made pizza last week. I made mine with homemade tomato sauce as a base, canned anchovies, shrimp, and eidam cheese as a topping. It was delicious.
Yeah that pizza butt pizza was stank. I think this one was great and the pepperoni was probably fine as-is for someone like me who hasn’t had real pepperoni in many years lol, I am easily fooled. Might be cool to try doing a white sauce next. I know how to make that stuff easily. 2 tbs butter with 2 tbs (or so) of flour, cooked like a roux but you don’t gotta get it dark. Then add 1/3 a cup of milk until it’s pretty runny (I think usually about 1 1/3 cup milk total), then add 1/3 cup of parmesan until it’s as cheezy as u want it. Add a little nutmeg, minced garlic, and aglio olio or whatever spices u like and ur done! U can use different cheese if you want like a cheddar sauce or whatever.
more recippy action, thx man
charly – was that edam in lieu of mozz? have you had both ways? if so, how do they compare?
When the eclipse hits your eye like a big pizza pi …
The what?
Heathen!
Seems a bit pointless if using real cheese and real mayo. Is it actually cheaper than real pepperoni? Most meat substitutes tend to be more expensive in my experience.
the point is the distinction between being vegan and vegetarian. my husband is the latter, for his own reasons. as for me, while the veg pepp was fine, real pepp would have been much nicer. i can imagine a non-veg version to go with this one tho: it felt lighter. sometimes people don’t want something that feels heavy. as for pineapples on pizza, i won’t comment for similar reasons to not talking about the middle east, heh.