Pizza dough at home

For one of my birthday parties as a girl my poor, misguided parents indulged my request for a pizza party. The morning of the party they picked up fresh pizza dough from our local bakery, the one and only Del Buono's. (Side note: locals tend to say this "Dell Boy-noes," which is so South Jersey.) They brought the dough balls home, covered them with cloth to rise, and chastised me repeatedly for sneaking little bits of raw dough to play with or eat. Then my friends came over, had a flour fight, made a couple of pizzas, and I had a great birthday.

My mom was a pizza mom at my Catholic grade school. She and a few other moms would go to the school on Friday afternoons and make pizzas for all the kids from pre-made crusts, large bags of shredded mozzarella, and most importantly, Dom Pepino pizza sauce. (More on Dom Pepino in a future post.) Sometimes my mom would bring home extra crusts and we would have "St. Rose Pizza" that night for dinner too. The days when I got to eat double pizza were some of the happiest of my childhood.

A few months ago, Pizzadelphia and I started using the Pillsbury pizza crust you can find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store. It comes in a can, just like the Grands, and rolls out to a square shape. We did all sorts of fabulous pizzas - lamb and ricotta, vodka sauce and sopressata, chicken and broccoli. I loved the ease of making pizza at home, but those roll out crusts make me fart, like a lot, and I think there are some seriously non-natural ingredients in there. I'll check and get back to you.

Recently, Pizzadelphia started making pizza dough from scratch and concocting beautiful pizzas without weird chemicals or xantham gum or anything in them. Just pure, unadulterated, pizza goodness. This is how I know Pizzadelphia loves me. There is no phrase that makes my heart swell quite like "I made you a pizza."

I'm going to try my hand at making pizza dough from scratch this weekend if possible. I am hoping the smell of fresh dough rising under a kitchen cloth brings me back to my childhood, throwing flour at my friends as my parents stood there, horrified by what they brought on themselves.



Del Buono's Bakery
(I think they still do pizza dough. Call and ask. But if not, go anyway for the animal sculptures outside and the amazing rolls and corn muffins.)
319 Black Horse Pike, Haddon Heights, NJ
856-546-9585