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21st Century Renaissance Man Do-Do...

Wednesday, 02 January 2013 01:10

(Photo - Mikey Payne chowing down on dad's homemade thin-crust pizza, not that deep-dish Chicago-style crap.)

Cooking with Matt

By Matt Payne
(http://www.matthew-payne.blogspot.com)

Alright... my first ever off-season update. When I started this blog I had every intention of posting regular updates on a wide variety of topics, yet here I sit 2+ years later and every single post is a race report. So how can I go on calling this The Most Interesting Man in Columbia Heights? Well...

I pretty much am that one-dimensional and boring. Now I could do the standard training update you routinely see on your typical triathlon-focused blog, but that would be even more boring and repetitive than an endless stream of very-much-identical race reports. It's December. I'm swimming a lot. We'll leave it at that....

Today I'm not going to say one more damn word about triathlon. I'm going to take one small step toward earning my blog title and drop some real 21st century Renaissance man shit on you. We're going to be talking about cooking. Yes, you heard me right. Cooking. I'm going to take you through all the steps necessary to make a boss level pizza from scratch right in your own kitchen.

Before we begin, we have to clear a couple things up. First and most important, proper pizza has thin crust. If you prefer that deep dish abomination they erroneously refer to as pizza in Chicago, you are a weird pervert and we probably can't be friends. I think there are support groups for that sort of thing. Second, this is not a process for the impatient. It is absolutely essential to cold ferment your dough overnight at a minimum. You can Google recipes claiming that you can mix up the dough and throw it straight in the oven, but they are lying to you. Sure, the results are edible, but so is the pizza crust in a can you can get at the grocery store, which happens to be roughly the quality you'll get if you cut corners on your homemade dough. If you're OK with that level of quality just save yourself a lot of work and get the pre-made crap. Or better yet pick up the phone and have something delivered. READ MORE

ED. The MTN Guys love both thin-crust and deep-dish pizza.