Pizza in St. Louis

For dinner, I had quasi-homemade St. Louis-style pizza with arugula and red wine.

First, let me digress to point out how ridiculous this article is, particularly in light of its title. More than anything, I think the technique of cooking has been lost. We don't need more recipes, we need explanations and education. Good cookbooks teach technique. If you buy all your cookbooks for recipes alone, perhaps the problem is yours and not the cookbook's. Moreover, if you are a new cook scared off cooking completely by Julia Child's lengthy, detailed recipes (rather than, say, finding a less onerous cookbook), perhaps you are the problem.

So, dinner. I have a fondness for Chef Boyardee's pizza kits which predates both the presence of a Trader Joe's (hello pre-made pizza dough) and also my own extensive pizza-dough-making capabilities. Dates, actually, to the mid-Eighties. Thanks, mom.

The pizza kit, if you are not familiar, consists of a box with crust mix, can of tomato sauce, and Kraft parmesan cheese. It's maybe $2-3 at your local non-posh grocery store. My camera battery died, again, so no photos. The idea is to mix the crust mix with hot water, mix, let rise a few minutes, press into pan, decorate, and bake.

My cooking proclivities, much like Julia Child's cookbook, are not that simple. I modified the process by actually kneading the (very sticky) crust mix, and using olive oil to keep it from sticking. I wanted to use my pizza stone to cook it, but lacked a pizza peel to transfer it into the oven without incident. I improvised by patting the dough out onto the underside of a pan lid, then flipping it upside down over the (pre-heated) pizza stone and peeling it off. I then topped the dough with Trader Joe's rustic pasta sauce (better than the crap tomato goo it comes with), cheese, and vegetarian Italian "sausage", and put the stone back in the oven. Speaking of cheese, St. Louis has its very own pizza cheese. Provel is a processed cheese blend of swiss, white cheddar, and provolone. It melts into a gooey, smoky, buttery mess reminiscent of really, really good spray cheese. Useful but plasticky. Kind of like Velveeta, but tastier. The pizza turned out well...the sausage wasn't quite dry, crispy, or flavorful enough to truly imitate Italian sausage, but it wasn't bad for soy protein, and the pizza stone created a nice crust. The arugula salad nicely balanced the processed cheese's sweetness, and the wine (Nero d'Avola, $6, Trader Joe's) was very jammy, if a little too sweet. Not bad.