A Chance Encounter

Sometime about two summers ago I had a chance encounter that changed my life. I can't remember how exactly it happened, but like most contemporary romances I am sure it began on the internet. I know that some people still meet the old-fashioned way, at church, or through friends, or at work, or volunteering at the soup kitchen, or in a bar or a coffee shop, but these days if a couple didn't meet online, they should just tell everyone that they did anyway. For the sake of common decency, and to avoid public scandal.

I've been making pizza since I was a teenager, excluding the eight years I lived in New Haven walking distance from Modern Apizza, one of the better relationships so far in my life and certainly among the few that ended amicably albeit a little teary-eyed. I've never missed New Haven. I don't know how anyone could. But I do recall the pizza with great affection. Once we separated I didn't think about it, didn't grieve it. But also for several years I steered clear of any new relationship. I'd lived with a great pizza and was content for a while to go it alone.

(The dough just stirred until it forms a ball.)

Admittedly I was gun shy. Probably I feared the inevitable comparisons. It didn't help that Chicago traditionally is a deep dish pizza town. Ask me how I really feel about deep dish pizza and I will tell you:  it is an abomination. Good pizza, indeed a couple of outstanding pizzas, are definitely out there. But they demand a certain kind of attention, are surrounded with a certain degree of pretension that puts me off. Also they are mostly on the other side of town so never available when I need them. I am not opposed in principle to a long distance relationship. Just not with my pizza.

I don't think I was consciously looking, but I must have been ready to move on, must have been browsing the online equivalent of the baking personals without even realizing what I was doing. And then it happened. A casual meeting. A wordless attraction. A furtive second and third look. A flurry of excited questions. A bookmark in my browser. An exchange of confidential information.

(After rising a couple of hours at room temperature.)

From the moment my first bag of Antimo Caputo Tipo 00 flour arrived, I was bewitched by its silky touch and its relaxed self-confidence and undemanding performance. A date with my pizza dough is never a quickie. It usually takes three days before we reach a plateau, and then we often take it to the freezer and keep it going for weeks longer.

Here's how we get started.


500 grams Tipo 00 flour
1 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsps kosher salt
325 grams water

Stir with a spatula just until dough forms a shaggy ball, then let rise covered at room temperature a couple of hours. Fold down and turn a few times and refrigerate overnight. Fold and turn a few times the next day and then leave to ripen in refrigerator a couple of days more, folding and turning at least once each day. (This formula is from the website at Forno Bravo.)

(Turned and folded a few times the next afternoon.)

Here's a picture of the new light box. Whether it will frame effectively a whole pizza, time will soon tell.