House on fire!

Did anyone else play that ice-breaker game in high school youth group?? No? Mmkay.

Well, yesterday afternoon I gave my first and best effort at creating Pioneer Woman's homemade pizza. And I did. And it was amazing. And we have left overs. Muahahahaha!! But I also almost watched all of our worldly possessions go up in flames. You see, the oven had to be set to 500 degrees. That's the last degree setting until "broil". Pioneer Woman, while seemingly innocent and kind, did not put a warning at the bottom about cooking pizza in a ghetto oven. If it had been my cook book it would have read something like this:

WARNING: If you live in the ghetto, have ghetto neighbors, went to a ghetto high school, have ever been told you are the lucky owner of a ghetto booty, have ever owned a ghetto vehicle, have ever hummed Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto", or have a ghetto oven: do NOT attempt this pizza. I repeat, do NOT attempt this pizza.

Well, there was no warning. So I proceeded sans caution to make a lovely, gourmet, tomato-basil pizza, and then a subsequent pepperoni and turkey sausage pizza for my manly hubster who cannot survive on greens alone. See, one of the first steps in assembling the pizza is to drizzle the pan with olive oil and then spread out your pizza dough. So, I drizzled. *Note: I think the key here was that PW used rimmed baking sheets. I do not have rims. I wish I did, because that would probably complete my ghetto lifestyle. Heh heh.* Anyway. I drizzled. And I spread out the pizza dough and topped it with pesto, real mozzarella, roma tomatoes, and a sprinkling of parmesan. And then I stuck it in the fiery furnace, alongside Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And behold, it did not catch on fire...immediately. About eight minutes into the baking time, I turned on the oven light to see the deliciousness that was filling my apartment with a dizzying aroma of goodness, only to see olive oil pooling at the corner and then dripping off onto the blazing hot element in the bottom of the oven. And then, the flames. Thank goodness, however, that by the time I shrieked, "ohmygosh, it's on fire!!" the flames were gone. But where there's fire, there's smoke ('er, something...), and our apartment was literally filled with hazy smoke--as if pollen wasn't enough--even more so than when I burned the pork chops or the meatloaf, (I'm a good cook, I sw'ar). We, (and by that I mean "I"), set off both fire alarms--twice. I had only cooked the first pizza when the flames popped up, but we powered through, baking soda on hand, to cook the second one and they both turned out delicious, amazing, party-in-your-mouth good. So. P-Dub, thanks for the recipe. But next time, a heads up about cooking in ghetto ovens might be nice. I still love ya (and your recipes) more'n my luggage, though!

Tomato-Basil pizza. Recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.