Inspiration: Recently, my favorite pizza place closed unexpectedly, leaving a wedge-shaped hole in my heart. Since it was one of the few pizzerias I could actually eat at (as it used non-enriched flour), I’ve been missing my bi-weekly pizza runs!

Deep Calming Breath

I’ve tried making pizza dough in the past, and it was…okay. Not bad, just not great either. So I decided to up my pizza game and bought the following book.

King Arthur’s Baking School has all kinds of basic recipes for simple and complicated bakes, accompanied by helpful hints, tricks, and advice.

So, I tried the book’s pizza dough recipe….with a few tweaks. To add some extra flavor, I mixed in dried basil, majorum, and parsley. I also swapped half the all-purpose flour with bread flour to give the dough a bit more chew.

And it turned out beautifully!

Then I discovered the pizza sauce I thought was in the cupboard magically disappeared. (I swear it sprouted legs and wandered off.) Undaunted, I winged it. Using regular spaghetti sauce fortified with tomato paste (to thicken it and make it taste more tomatoey), I added extra herbs, a dash of sugar, and a healthy amount of gochugaru pepper flakes.

Helpful Hint: Make a sauce like this the day before. It will taste oodles better the next day as all the flavors have time to marry together.

Spreading my improvised sauce, I loaded the pizza with veggies and vegan chorizo and baked it….It turned out great! With more practice, it might even become excellent!

Doesn’t it look pretty!

Christie: Honestly? I’m not sure I can see any of Christie’s detectives making this…Save Superintendant Battle who I think would like feeding his family something that requires time to make and a bit of improvisation.