Musings on Pizza

 It's been a while since I've made a pizza. It seems I was obsessed about both, sourdough bread baking and making pizza for a while. And though you'd think I'd be going crazy bread baking during the pandemic, that hasn't been the case.

I'm considering making a pizza later on during the week, and it got me to thinking about my love of pizza, which for many of us was entrenched deeply during childhood.

Like many kids, I adored pizza day during the school week, which was nothing more special than a rectangular Ellio's type frozen pizza. But still quite good for what it was.

Getting pizza at home, however, for many years was not necessarily so fond of a memory.

To be blunt, I grew up poor. We were poorer than we should have been due to dodgey money management by my parents. I could go into the minutiae of the financial fuckery, but why bother. At age 52, I'm tired of sharing my traumas, and if it won't bring me any closure or resolution for all my resentments, I'll just keep it to myself. However, I will share this bit about pizza.

As an adult, I've been very critical of the crust and corniccione (the edge of the crust, or the "bone") of the pie. I guess I never gave it much thought, and then the realization set in not that long ago.

To be very blunt, even though I grew up poor, we all were fat, and by fat I mean OBESE--and for my parents, MORBIDLY OBESE. For several years, when my folks would order I pie, I vividly recall them ordering only a solitary pie for the five of us. 

Dad would easily put away three slices, and mom would polish off two, leaving one slice for each of us kids. One slice wasn't enough, as we all were very hearty eaters. 

One thing about my dad, when it came to fried chicken, he ate it with a knife and fork, and when dad ate pizza, he never ate the crust. So whether it was fried chicken night or it was pizza night, there was always bones of one manner or another to gnaw on.

I look back on this memory and it chaps my ass. My sister and brother and I would fight over who got dad's cast offs--yet at the time all three of us lacked the awareness that fighting over stuff that was headed to the trash bin might have been a weird thing. All we knew was that we were hungry.

The wonderful thing about being an adult is that if I want pizza, I can either order or make a pizza whenever I feel like having one. Maharajah doesn't eat tomato, or dairy, or garlic, etc, so the pizza is all mine, and I can usually polish it off in about 3-4 meals, depending on my appetite. 

Anyway, this blog post isn't going anywhere or making any point other than to illustrate how or why I'm critical about pizzas--especially the crust.