The Dough Also Rises

Katie Lee Joel

Growing up in West Virginia, I always thought having really good pizza meant calling up the local Pizza Hut or Papa John’s. I loved extra cheese and pepperoni. It wasn’t until college, when I studied in Italy, that I learned these chains were a far cry from the real thing.

I distinctly remember the first time I had pizza that summer in Florence. The crust was cracker-thin and blistering, the tomato sauce so fresh and painted on with the same care as though it were a brush stroke of Botticelli. And the cheese. Oh, the cheese, how I loved it so. The taste of that homemade mozzarella with its milk oozing out as each piece was sliced. This would only be the beginning of a long-lived affair.

From that moment on, I said goodbye to the frozen dough, canned tomato sauce and Poly-O cheese of pizzas past.

When my husband and I were renovating our home last year, the kitchen was my main concern. We merged two rooms together for more space, added every appliance under the sun, and even blew out the ceiling above. It is truly the cathedral of kitchens. My favorite feature has got to be the wood-burning Tuscan oven. It was a little intimidating to use at first, and I’m still perfecting my technique, but if I do say so myself, last night we made some pretty mean pizzas.

Aleishall took the train to Long Island and we stopped at Whole Foods to stock up on all the necessary ingredients. Boy, that place was a zoo. After battling through the aisles, we found everything we needed and headed to the house to get started.

After much debate, we settled on Gourmet’s recipe for crust. I admit I was quite the skeptic. The recipe called for only one rising and no sugar. What was the yeast going to feed on without sugar? My concerns were ultimately overruled. After all, Ruth Reichl did in fact edit the book and I had faith she would never lead us astray.

While the dough was rising and the oven heating, we braised radicchio, sautéed pears, sliced mushrooms, and caramelized onions. The smells of the kitchen were intoxicating (and so was the red wine).

After an hour and a half, the dough had risen, even without the sugar, and we began assembling our first pie of the evening. Aleishall rolled out the dough as thin as a tortilla and shaped more like a map of Wisconsin than a circle. We schmeared it with fig compote and a sprinkle of salt, topped with the caramelized onions, pears, radicchio and a generous sprinkling of Gorgonzola. In the intense heat of the fire, the flavors of the salty Gorgonzola melted together with the sweetness of the fruits and the bitterness of the radicchio to create pure satisfaction in each and every bite.