Friday Night Pizza

Friday night pizza is a tradition from my childhood. We would head to the local pizza parlor and spend time with family enjoying delicious pies and time together. Little did I know…Mr. Fanatic’s family and friends were in the same restaurant most Friday nights! (Although we probably fought over the Ms. PacMan machine, we did not officially meet until college.)

This love of Friday night pizza continued into adulthood. For years we would hit a local joint for pizza with friends or carryout nearly every week.  Boy has that changed!  Now Friday nights mean the smell of wood burning and flour covered hands. It means gathering in our kitchen to assemble pizzas with homemade dough and our favorite fresh ingredients.  We are typically not alone, preferring to share the evening with friends or family, just like the Friday nights we had as kids.

The collaboration with others has lead to so many fun experiences with topping combinations, adjustments to the dough recipe, odd shaped pizzas, and lots of fun.  Plus, the more mouths you have to feed, the more pizzas you can make! Our pizza nights read more like an all you can eat buffet with everyone getting a little of lots of different variations. Early on our staple pizza was the Margherita-sauce, cheese, basil. Simple. Straightforward. We made others but seemed to come back to this time and again. You can really taste the quality of the ingredients in this simple pizza. The way the tomatoes taste so fresh and sweet, the gooey slightly salty mozzarella, the heavenly basil aroma and flavor. (Sometimes I wonder if that smell could be bottled for perfume…but I digress…)

Lately our #1, most requested pizza, is our white pizza.  Often times we make two or three of them over the course of an evening.  No tomatoes here, just high quality olive oil, garlic, fresh mozzarella, salt and some chopped fresh rosemary from our garden. The rosemary is added and cooked during the last minute or so that the pizza is in the oven.  Even our extremely picky daughter devours this pizza (often an entire pie to  her-60lb-self. Ha!)

We encourage our guests to be part of the process.  Do you want to stretch your own dough? Go for it!  You want to try hot salami and pineapple? Do it! We try to have a wide variety of toppings available to suit any taste, even those we don’t like, for example mushrooms. (Ick!)  We have tried many different vegetables from sauteed fennel to bell peppers, asparagus to onions.  We love to top the pizza with arugula when it comes out of the oven. Something about the bitter peppery flavor just makes certain flavor combinations shine.  Meat is big at our house…pepperoni, italian sausage, andouille and even our new hot salami that we procured from a local restaurant (Mr. Fanatic was NOT leaving without it. But that’s a story for another day…)  One of my all time favorites is a farm fresh egg with a rich runny yolk that drizzles all over the pizza.

We’ve also varied our cheeses over time.  Parm-Reg that we brought home from Italy (in our VERY heavy suitcases) is on every pie. Sometimes it appears both before firing as a topping and after as a garnish (particulary good with fresh arugula).

As another Friday night rolls around you know where to find us…gathered around a hot oven, handling dough, socializing and creating delicious memories! Hope you are doing the same!

For more from Wood Fired Fanatics, please follow us on Facebook and Instagram @woodfiredfanatics.