Refinements to the method

The day the movers emptied the house in Pittsburgh, Nicole arranged for me to make pizza for dinner. Christy and Gracie came over to join us. I employ a number of tools in my craft, including a pizza stone, rolling pin, and pizza peel, and sometimes also the food processor. All of these were gone. I was not looking forward to doing without.

In spite of some setbacks in the makeshift process, one of which meant kneading the first round of pizza sauce in to reform the first crust, the two pizzas turned out really well. I give part of the credit to the extra rise time, but another share to the hand shaping. These pizzas were not as nearly perfectly circular as I can achieve with the rolling pin, but they also hadn't had all the air flattened out of them, and the crust was much fluffier.

I'm back making pizzas with a full arsenal in Seattle, but I've continued to eschew the rolling pin, and they keep turning out nicely. In addition, I learned another trick recently. Somewhere I got the idea of putting the tomatoes on after the pizza was done. Tomatoes bleed all over the pizza when cooked, and it takes a lot of care to avoid a soggy outcome. Other toppings with high water content behave similarly, including both fresh mozzarella and pineapple, some of our favorite toppings.

Tonight's pizza was a smashing success. Here's the recipe:

• The same crust as usual
• Topped with pizza sauce, Canadian bacon, and crumbled goat cheese
• Baked for twelve minutes
• Removed from the oven
• Further topped with sliced peaches and grape tomatoes, plus a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella
• Let sit a few minutes for the toppings to warm up

This method has a number of virtues. In addition to the peaches and tomatoes retaining their moisture and structure, their warming up helped cool down the rest of the pizza to the perfect temperature for eating. Not only that, but there weren't any of the dangerous hot spots that come with baking them.

It certainly rates among the best pizzas I have yet made, and Nicole was excited to think of other potential fruit toppings. More experimentation may follow.