I like making homemade pizza, and it’s especially gratifying when I make the dough. But dough from scratch is difficult to cook, as it tends to dry at the edges and remain gooey in the center. But then I considered that the baking sheet upon which I normally cook is designed to buffer temperature changes and shield the food from direct heat (having an air pocket). This works well for cookies, but undermines the nature of pizza dough–which is why pizza stones and sheets are specifically designed to transfer this heat. It was a lingering thought–one that stalks the mental periphery, waiting for the appropriate trigger.
And such a trigger came when we revisited Mendelsons. Pilfered from some industrial kitchen somewhere, a stack of bread racks sat ignored, until I gazed upon them and my memory engaged. They were large aluminum sheets, regularly perforated. For $8, it would serve my needs. I bought one.
Back at home, it seemed larger than it was in the store, and I shoved it alongside the refrigerator–out of the way and forgotten for the moment. Then, some days later, Liz suggested we make pizza…if the pizza sheet would fit. I balked. I hadn’t thought to check that it actually fit into the oven. I tried.
It did not.
Dammit.
But I didn’t come all this way to have heterogeneously-cooked pizza crust. Off to the garage!
Fortunately, the aluminum was soft, and after some patience and a couple replacement carbon cutting blades for the Dremel, I had a crudely chopped pizza sheet.
Obviously that wouldn’t do. Sharp edges would scratch the oven, not to mention my hands. But the grinder and my kitchen steel polished it down to a smooth edge without problem.
Huzzah!
Evenly cooked pizza, and I didn’t need a $100 pizza stone. And who else can say they have a custom-made pizza sheet? Frugal, and nerdy.
–Simon