Simkin: Pizza a dish best served homemade

Here in Oakland, there’s a wonderful variety of pizzas to choose from, ranging in quality from… Here in Oakland, there’s a wonderful variety of pizzas to choose from, ranging in quality from our $5 pies to their gourmet counterparts. But there’s one pizzeria you might not have considered: your own kitchen.

Preparing the quintessential college food is easier than you might think.

For a properly crisp crust and neat slices you might want to invest in a pizza stone and pizza wheel, which dices up pies marginally easier than does a knife. Otherwise, no special equipment is necessary.

As for dough, my family uses this super-simple recipe, and although I’ve experimented with more complex methods, I’m still rather partial to it. Dissolve one package of dry yeast into 3/4 a cup of warm water. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 3/4 cups of flour. Knead the mixture on a well-floured surface, adding extra flour if need be to keep it from sticking.

It’s usually my strategy just to smush the dough into a roughly circular blob on the pizza stone or baking sheet, but if you were looking forward to the “spinning the dough over your head” part of pizza preparation, this is the time to attempt it.

The dough doesn’t need to rise — you can go ahead and add the sauce and cheese (more on those in a moment). Bake the pie at 400 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes, keeping a close watch on it toward the end, lest it brown beyond satisfaction and into the realm of smokey, inedible, burnt things that ruin your kitchen’s ambience.

Shredded cheese is a must — slices will melt strangely — and although this is a homemade concoction, there’s no need for it to look unnecessarily homely and awkward. The type of cheese itself — or types, go ahead and experiment with combinations — is entirely at your discretion, as, of course, are the toppings.

And with this, I offer the same warning message I so vehemently promote with frozen yogurt: Think about how things will go together before it’s too late. There aren’t a lot of pizza topping combinations that would be disastrous with each other, but do yourself the favor of not discovering them.

I will confess that I have rarely, if ever, made my own pizza sauce from scratch, so I have zero qualms approving the use of a store-bought sauce, as per my fine example.  But if you’re keen to add an extra hit of ambition to the undertaking, there are several options available.

Pesto can be a fun addition to any pizza — it can even replace the sauce. It freezes marvelously, so if you’re going through the trouble of preparing it in the first place, you might consider doubling the recipe and saving a few servings.

Not unlike a pot roast or casserole, pesto leaves room for flexibility in its preparation. Everything essentially gets tossed into a food processor. That’s the one equipment caveat: to get the sauce mixture chopped finely enough, you do have to invest in an appropriate appliance — attempting to mince the ingredients by hand with a knife is unlikely to yield favorable results.

The fresh basil leaves, olive oil and garlic cloves are a must — a ratio of 4 cups of basil, 1/2 cup of olive oil and two crushed garlic cloves per batch — but the inclusion and amount of pepper, parsley, pine nuts or almonds and Parmesan cheese is up to you.

My roommate has her own spin on white pizza, eschewing all things remotely healthy, even the minimal vegetable content of red sauce. She uses a gorgonzola cream sauce and tops the pizza with still more cheese — usually mozzarella so as to see the albino theme all the way through.

To try her version, bring 4 cups of heavy cream to a boil and allow it to simmer until it’s roughly half of its original volume, which should take about 45 minutes. Add 4 ounces of crumbled gorgonzola cheese and nutmeg, kosher salt and black pepper to taste. Stir everything together and spread your newly-minted sauce on the pizza dough — no need to wait for it to cool — or refrigerate it in a sealed container for later use.

For those not intrepid enough to handle creating dough or otherwise disinclined to attempt a full pie, I offer this advice on pizza toast: Lightly toast the bread prior to smothering it in sauce to prevent sogginess, then leave your creation in the toaster oven until the cheese melts.