So as I may have mentioned, there were pizza-making plans. The genesis of these pizza-making plans came from a giant lump of dough in the freezer. I do not remember where this dough came from. It might have been pork bun dough from last February. But all that mattered was that it was a basic yeast dough, and you can make pizza with a basic yeast dough.

I had mozzarella, I had Italian sausage. I had some mushrooms. What I was really missing was both sauce, and a way of including some of the shitloads of CSA peppers I have on a pizza.

So I roasted up about ten of the smallest of the peppers, one to two inches in length. I knew this was going to be a pain in the ass on an open burner, so I hit on a brilliant idea - set one of my wire cooling racks over the burners, and roast the peppers on the rack. This worked GREAT. Except for the part where the cooling rack heated up to red-hot, softened, and sagged a bit over the burner trivets. Whoops. I have two cooling racks, though. And could always use more.

I also needed a sauce. Since I was already roasting peppers, sauteeing mushrooms, and baking crust, I decided to go with a raw sauce. Four campari tomatoes, a quarter of an onion, two cloves of garlic, two cubes of pesto, and one raw pimiento (small sweet red) pepper from the CSA pile went into the food processor along with a large can of crushed tomatoes and pureed. I really have a thing for raw tomato sauces - I love the strong sweetness and the fresh vegetal taste.

However, it's not the best for pizza. Ended up having two problems. First, the dough was thick enough that a ten-minute par-cook, then a fifteen minute bake with the toppings on it in a 425 degree oven wasn't enough to cook the crust all the way through. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't right either.

And second, you put a raw tomato sauce in the oven, and it starts to cook. And when it cooks, it releases liquid. And that liquid kind of soaks into the crust. Again, it wasn't fatal - the oven was hot enough that the crust wasn't really soggy per se, but it did stick to the pan like crazy and was just messy.

So. Flavor great, texture iffy, doneness slightly off. Someday, when I have a real kitchen, I have a feeling proper pizzas will be a more regular thing, and I'll be able to practice and get better at them, but except for special circumstances, like dough taking up vital freezer space, I'm not really equipped for exceptional pizza.