Don’t let Mark fool you with all his Asian-ness and Cajun-talk. His favorite food isn’t jambalaya stirred in a cast iron pot or adobo, the unofficial national food of the Philippines. It’s pizza. His favorite food is pizza.

As mentioned in my king cakes post, bread baking or anything involving yeast intimidated me and I’m always looking for a (painless and easy) method to conquer fears. Spurred by newfound wifely devotion I decided pizza dough could be the way. We often listen to cooking and food podcasts on road trips. (Some of our favorites are the Bon Appétit Foodcast, Go Fork Yourself with Andrew Zimmern and Starving for Attention with Richard Blais, {air horn sound effect}). Obviously, BA Foodcast’s episode “The Absolute Best Pizza in America” ended up on our playlist and we heard Adam Rapoport interview Joe Beddia, proprietor and chef of Pizza Beddia, a Philadelphia sensation. His book Pizza Camp seemed the perfect primer to get the perfect pizza crust. I immediately reserved it at our library (books are free there!), excited to start mixing, proofing and tossing dough in the air. And it IS the perfect primer to make the perfect pizza crust. But I’m impatient. And Joe’s process spans two days. I caved and turned it into bread loaves on day one. I failed Pizza Camp, but the bread was delicious. The book is definitely a great read – really fun illustrations and lettering – and worth a gander if you’re a better person than I am.

I happily doomed myself to store-bought dough (shoutout Trader Joe’s!), until a friend turned me onto two-ingredient dough. Though still not technically using yeast and significantly less chef-y, it is completely satisfying and so quick. With just flour, greek yogurt and toppings, you can have pizza! People also use the dough for bagels and pastries, which I found serviceable enough, but when I think it’s best used for pizza (or flatbread?*). Toss it around in a mixer with a dough hook, cut into two halves, add your toppings, you’ve got pizza! There are recipes everywhere but it’s basically a 1:1 ratio of flour to yogurt. I do a cup of each to yield two 8-10 inch pizzas (and add 1-1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and some salt if the flour isn’t self-rising). I roll it onto a pizza peel with lots of flour and cornmeal (it’s super sticky), top it with whatever’s handy (rotisserie chicken! breakfast bacon! bell peppers from #GardendeSilva! random Italian-sounding spices!) and get it into the oven onto a heated pizza stone, which I do think is worth it to fulfill its pizza destiny. I’ve tried both all purpose and whole wheat flours, and I like whole wheat, it better justifies eating a whole pizza. I was making it about once a week for awhile, because it’s that easy and also because I bought a Costco amount of mozzarella and needed to use that shit up. Let me know if you’ve tried it or if you have another recipe I should try!

Dough mixed prior to rolling.

Pre-baking.

*In an effort of accuracy, I Googled for five minutes on pizza vs. flatbread, leading me to this article from the Palm Beach Daily News (seemed legit). In summation, there can be classifications based on differences in shape, dough and toppings, but overall pizza is technically a specific type of flatbread, mainly defined culturally. Whatever you want to call it, go forth with your carbs and cheese!