Friday Night Pizza

Somewhere on the way home I became consumed with the idea of eating pizza. Not the Pizza Hut feeling. Not the frozen-but-quick feeling. But the need to make my crust, chop my tomatoes and slice my mozarella. The need to eat the very simplest of pizza's, the flag waving emblem of Italy, with the anchovy that represents nothing but anchovy, this overwhelmed me. And this is risky on my part because although I can remember with great clarity the pizza's that I have made successfully - I am also aware that there are dozens of attempts that were ok, but not noteworthy, and several that were blah.
The problem is almost always the crust. I can't help but put it in the oven before it's had a chance to rise, and then, weighed down by too much tomato and god-knows-what-else - it remains flat, unaired and crispy. Crackerbread.
I started with this.



Or maybe this looks better...




And I was consumed by the passion to cook. I knew that this would be fabulous. I knew that this was going to show how I had matured as a cook and obsessive bread baker.




Anybody see any problem with this picture?


Way too much stuff for relatively thin pizza dough. There was dripping of cheese and tomato and smoke and alarms and a nasty burning smell from the base of the oven while the pizza itself was doughy and pale and unappetizing. Told you it was risky.

I finished with this.