A culinary disaster barely averted...

Sometimes I get Jonesing to cook something up, and there's nothing that's going to get in my way until I do. It's been a really long time since I've made my own pizza, and today, for some reason, that seemed like the perfect thing to do.

I dug around for a pizza dough recipe, and found one by Giada DiLaurentis. Never content to keep a recipe as written, I decided to tweak it and add about a 1/4 cup of cornmeal to the dough. Much of my tweaking philosophy can be summed up by me saying, "what the heck? Let's give it a whirl." I think this might have been mistake number one.

The dough came together just fine, and I decided to heat up the pizza stone for the hour it took to let the dough rise. I placed the pizza stone on the very bottom of the oven, which is something I've read about doing. Mistake number two.

While things were heating up, and the dough was rising, I headed out to the grocery store to buy some ingredients. My favorite pizza is pretty basic: pepperoni, onions, green peppers and mushrooms. No need for any sort of fancy cheese--mozzarella does just fine, and as to the sauce, a classic marinara is what makes me happiest.

I picked up the supplies, shopping in the usual happy mode I find myself in when I'm cooking, and headed back home to whip up the marinara sauce. When I got inside the house, the kitchen was HOT! I started having doubts ring through my mind, but I went ahead with getting the sauce going.

I made a basic marinara by sauteing some onions and garlic, followed by a can of Italian plum tomatoes. I let that simmer while I cut up the veggies for the toppings. When everything was cut up and ready to go, I finished the sauce by adding a little red wine vinegar, some hot pepper flakes, black pepper, salt and a touch of sugar. Then I blended it all together to create a nice and thick marinara saucy. Very tasty.

Time to tackle the dough. I rolled it out, and it ended up being square, so I just went with the flow. I don't own a pizza peel, (one of those big wooden oars you see in pizza shops), so I went with a cookie sheet placed upside down, with a boat load of cornmeal on top. Mistake number three. It's time to buy a pizza peel.

I loaded up the pizza, and it was looking pretty promising, but I was getting nervous with getting the pizza onto the stone. The pizza seemed immovable, even though I had put a lot of cornmeal on top to act as lubrication. I opened the oven door, and realized that the pizza stone was really, really hot. Getting the pizza onto the stone had to happen quick--no fear, and no mess ups.

I tried to let gravity to do the work for me, hoping the pizza would just slide off. I think this is where using cornmeal in the dough was a bit of a problem. The pizza just stuck. I think the marinara had leaked through the dough, since I saw the beginnings of a few holes in the dough when I rolled it out. I don't think that would have happened with just wheat flour, and it was compounded, I believe, because I was using a metal pan. The only thing to do at this point was do some quick wrist action on the pan, and hope for the best.

I slid the pan forward as quick as I could, and immediately pulled back, hoping that the inertia of the initial movement would make the pizza just slide right off. Since the dough was sticking some, the stuff that wasn't stuck moved first, i.e., some of the toppings. I heard an instant sizzle as onions and green peppers landed on the wall of the oven and on top of the pizza stone. Bad news, but fortunately, the rest of the pizza followed, though oddly with an instant sizzle.

Pizzas shouldn't necessarily sizzle. That's the sound of something very wet on something very hot. I realized I definitely had some holes in the crust, and that the pizza stone was insanely hot--hotter I thought, than the rest of the oven. That means possibly a burned crust, without those nice browned spots on top. I was bound and determined to pull that puppy out before the crust became a piece of charcoal, even if it wasn't completely done on top. I had too much invested in this thing.

I had about four or five minutes to figure out how to get that thing out of the oven, and thinking all the time that gunk was oozing out the bottom, causing a seething, nasty mess, and spots that were definitely going to stick. This was going to get ugly.

That pizza cooked fast. After about four minutes, I realized that the crust was beginning to show signs of charcoaling on me. I grabbed the biggest spatula I could find, a fish spatula I use for grilling, and tested the water. The front of the pizza lifted off just fine, but the oozing mess on the back of the pizza stone was going to cause some problems. I realized too that if that pizza was in there much longer, smoke would be billowing out of the oven, stinking up my house for a week.

Nothing to do but dive in and manhandle this pizza into submission. I grabbed another cookie sheet, and lifted the pizza up with the fish spatula while I slowly slid the cookie sheet underneath. I ran into the charred mess at the back, and just jammed the spatula under it, hard. The pizza broke apart, but most of it made it's way onto the cookie sheet. I hurriedly pulled the pizza out, and of all things, placed it in the middle of the floor. I was thinking about other things; I had to get that pizza stone out, and NOW!

I ran downstairs, where all of my pot holders were waiting to be washed, ran back upstairs, and on my way, stepped outside to open the grill. I stepped over the incredibly dangerous pile of tools that were sitting outside my bathroom, and made some clear mental notes about the path I needed to take on my way outside with the smoldering pizza stone.

I dove into the oven again, and pulled a corner of the pizza stone from the oven with another spatula, and grabbed that thing with everything I had. I felt it heating right through the potholders fast. I hurried across the demolition zone, burst through the door, and dropped the pizza stone onto the grill just at the moment where it was becoming uncomfortably hot.

Then I went in and ate some very ugly, yet very tasty pizza, accompanied by a couple of beers.

Domino's might have been easier, but this was way more fun.