Wrestling with Pizza

We love pizza. Really. It's soooooooo good. We also love to cook together. Brian is a FANTASTIC cook...and I'm well...I follow the recipe because if I didn't, we would end up eating take out every night. But Brian...goodness, he can just add a pinch of this, a dash of that, a sprinkle here, and VOILA'! he just made decadent steak with mushrooms, white wine, garlic, and something else really yummy he thought would taste nice in it. He has the cooking skills...and I have the photography skills, I guess. :)

A few weeks ago, we had our good and soon-to-be-married friends over for dinner. Brian and I made pizza. It. was. yummy-in-my-tummy delicious! We even made the tomato sauce from scratch! (don't be too impressed, it wasn't that hard) Our pizza was topped with basil, tomato, and motzerella. Classic. So good. Well, we enjoyed it so much we decided to recreate it again on Friday night. The only difference this time was that we decided to use REAL dough...like...mushy dough you have to knead out and flip around. Last time we used the premade stuff (which I thought was better).

It started out with Brian flipping and tossing it in the air. I just let him handle it from here whilst I documented it.

I thought they would be pretty sweet pictures.

more flipping...

He looks like a pro! I think it's the Italian in him.

Now he must concentrate...

Kneading is pretty hard...

The kneading and flipping around was done and we thought we were ready to start topping it (which was my job). We topped it, poured the sauce, cheese, tomato's, motz, basil...and then Brian stood for a minute, looked at it, and realized Oh shoot...we can't actually put it on the pizza stone that has been sitting in the oven on 500 degrees for the past ten minutes. The dough was sticking to the cutting board. It was NOT come off no matter what we tried. Brian tried his darndest to get our dinner off and on to the stone with minimal destruction. Our tummy's were hungry and grumbling at this point (it was about 9pm) and we were desperate to get our pizza on to the stone. Pizza fail...we didn't use enough flour on the bottom for it to come off... Well, after figuring out twisted ways to get the pizza off the cutting board and on to the stone, Brian finally gave up and started gathering it all in a ball again...sauce, cheese, tomato's, basil, motz...it was all in one crumbled up ball of dough. And what did he do? He plopped it on the stone, spread it out to make it look some what of a pizza and put it in the oven to bake. "Are we really eating that?" "Yep!" he said with a smug look of determination. One thing I realized about my husband is that he doesn't like defeat. He didn't let the pizza defeat him. He was determined we were going to eat this for dinner...

and well...this is what it looked like. One ball of dough spread out to "look" like a pizza. You want some?? mmmm......blech.

Did we eat it? Yep, sure did. :)

Oh, but our pizza story isn't over yet...


Then Saturday morning came. :) We love Saturday mornings. I can usually find Brian in this chair drinking coffee either watching some TV or reading his Bible. This is my view from the bathroom. It's the simple things in life I like...like this view. :) I was in a hurry to get out the door to go to Georgetown for a family shoot and he was in a hurry...to...do nothing.

For the family shoot, I was to meet them at Dean and Deluca in Georgetown. I walked in and loved this view. I love the lighting, the bakery goodness, the coffee, the fresh produce, the everything.

Behind Dean and Deluca is this view. Brian and I had our engagement shoot here. Again, I love the lighting, the buildings, the river, the Fall foliage, everything.

The family came for their photoshoot and I got busy.

That afternoon, we were headed to Annapolis for another family shoot. Gah! I love Annapolis. It's my Boston away from Boston. I got done with the family and headed to a basement Starbucks to meet Brian for a little date.

I loved the lighting in the underground Starbucks.

Holiday Gingerbread skim latte? Yes, please!

We are kinda big coffee drinkers and because we didn't get enough at Starbucks, Brian told me about this cute little coffee cafe called Baltimore Cafe. (clever name)

We treated ourselves to a bag of freshly ground Christmas blend coffee and Apple Cider tea bags.

They had the coffee beans on on their front counter so you could smell them. My nose was in love.

We got home that night and wanted to try our Christmasy coffee blend (which was DIVINE, btw) and well...as I said before, Brian doesn't like defeat so we tried the second time to make some homemade pizza with real dough.

(btw, we are collect starbucks mugs from cities. We bough the Mexico one on our honeymoon and the NY one a few weeks ago during our trip...strangely enough, we don't have a DC mug yet...or a Boston mug.)

I didn't document the pizza making this time, but in the end, the pizza successfully came off the cutting board and onto the stone. Here it is...smelling all yummy and looking bubbly in our oven.

mmm....finished product. Looks good, right?

WRONG! I had one bite, turned it over and there was an INCH thick of flour on the bottom. I knew my stomach won't be able to digest all that flour and I knew Brian's wouldn't either...

"Want to order pizza?" I asked.

"No way, we'll just scrape it off."

Next thing I heard was Brian flipping through the draw to find a knife, a bunch of scraping, and the water turning on.

Water? Was he washing it? Maybe. Not sure.

The next words that came from the kitchen were this...

"Babe, want to order from Dominoe's?"

Haha...he humbly accepted his defeat with the homemade pizza, and I proudly accepted the delivery of the Dominoe's pizza man.

Homemade Pizza, 2

Bosak's, 0.