Wood-fired-oven pizza at home!

My culinary accomplishments are few and far between.  This is mostly because I'm inept in the kitchen, but also because my wife is such a good cook that I'm pretty much crowded out of doing anything other than boiling water and cooking pasta and rice.

So the reason I'm doing this blog post is that this may be the only time, ever, that I've struck foodie gold.  But I have!  Thanks to a coworker, who directed me to this blog post by some MIT-engineer foodie guy, I was able to make real pizza at home.  It's not Pizzeria Paradiso -- nor even Two Amys -- but it's getting there.

Here's how you do it (you can read the MIT's guy's post for the whole story, but it's really long):

First, find a cute and talented sous-chef to chop up fresh, beautiful produce -- tomatoes, peppers, onions, pineapple, whatever you want to put on your pizza.

You'll probably also want some sauce:  I recommend using canned, stewed tomatoes.  Add whatever seasonings the cute sous-chef tells you to (in my case, oregano, dried basil, garlic powder, salt and pepper).  (You may also want to roast some garlic and throw it on with the stewed tomatoes.  This is easier than it sounds, and even I can do it: take a head of garlic, cut it in half through the middle so you've sliced each individual clove in half, drizzle some oil on the tops, and roast them in a small electric oven.  When you're done, mash the things with a fork so the roasted garlic comes out from the now-crispy skins.)

Okay, now you've got your toppings and your sauce.  You'll also need dough and cheese.  We got some frozen dough from the store whose container claimed it was made in Italy and some over-priced fresh mozzarella.  Roll the dough out so it's round and about the size of your skillet.  Make sure you stab it with a fork after you roll it out; otherwise little gassy pockets form and your pizza bubbles more than it's supposed to -- plus, the big bubbles get too close to the broiler in the oven, all Icarus-like, and catch on fire.  Bad scene.

And now for the moment we've all been waiting for: blasting that pizza at 800 degrees, just like in a real pizza restaurant!  But how?  Your oven doesn't go up to 800 degrees.  This just shows that you didn't go to MIT; as the MIT guy explains, you don't need the whole oven to get that hot, you just need to hit the pizza with enough heat on the top and bottom that you get the same effect.  So get yourself a cast-iron skillet -- NOT a non-stick pan, otherwise the weird non-stick chemicals will break down and give you cancer (seriously) -- and put it on the stovetop and turn the heat on.  Turn on your oven's broiler at the same time.  As the skillet is heating up, put your dough in the skillet and top your pizza.

Once you've topped your pizza in the pan, take the whole thing and put it under the broiler -- the closer the better, so it's as hot as possible.  Then press your nose against the oven glass and watch the beautiful, beautiful cooking / charring process.

Blacken to taste (which, in my case, is pretty blackened).  Take out the pizza in the skillet and put it back on the stovetop; finish cooking the bottom up here.  Then eat it!  (If you're particularly disciplined you can cut it into slices first.)

Definitely the best homemade pizza I've ever had -- except for the pizza I made at a home that had a professional, wood-fired pizza oven in the backyard.  A few things to watch out for:  First, as I said, don't use a non-stick pan or you'll die (faster than you otherwise would).  Second, if you use wet toppings like fresh mozzarella and pineapple, you'll want to dry them as much as possible; otherwise the water will absorb a lot of the heat while it evaporates and prevent your pizza from getting its beautiful char.   You don't want mush; you want pizza!