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This past weekend I made homemade pizza crust for the first time! My first attempt of the recipe failed, I confess, though that was due more to my following the letter of the recipe rather than trusting my own instinct and experience (seriously, in what world do you make yeast dough with “hot” water? “Warm” is a much better descriptor of the temperature needed for yeast activation. Too high and it kills the yeast; too low and it the yeast will fail to activate. I haven’t done much yeast baking in recent years but these are aspects of the process I know. I was just thrown by the recipe. Also, the first time I used the food processor method to make the dough, which is really unnecessary. Firstly, it creates a mound of harder-to-clean dishes and secondly it robs you of the joy of kneading dough to elasticity with your hands!

Anyhow, I thought I’d share the recipe with you in case you, like me, have never been in the habit of making your own pizza dough. I never realized it was so easy and so quick, though to some the hour-long rising time might not count as “quick.” To me, it’s easy enoug to mix together four ingredients and set the thing aside for an hour, during which time you can putter around getting everything else ready for the meal. Also, the pizza only takes 10 minutes in the oven to cook, so it’s not really that long after all.

Here is the recipe:

Handmade Pizza Dough
from The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook by Elizabeth Baird

2 cups	all-purpose flour	500 ml
1 1/2 tsp	quick-rising (instant) dry yeast	7 ml
3/4 tsp	salt	4 ml
3/4 cup	warm water (50C/120F)	175 ml
2 tsp	olive oil	10 ml

In bowl, combine flour, yeast and salt. With wooden spoon, gradually stir in water and oil until dough forms, using hands if necessary.

Turn out onto lightly-floured surface; knead for 8 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Shape into smooth ball. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease all over. Cover with plastic wrap; let rise in warm draft-free place for about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

(Make-ahead version: Refrigerate unrisen dough to rise for 24 hours. Or freeze in plastic bag for up to 1 month; let thaw and rise in refrigerator overnight.)

Once dough has risen, turn out dough onto lightly floured surface. Form into a 12-inch pizza base. Let rest for 15 minutes.

Cover with sauce and toppings. Bake at 500F (260C) for 10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and crust is golden and slightly puffed.

As you can see in the photo above, I used a pizza stone, which apparently improves the quality of homemade pizza crusts to the Nth degree, so I don’t know how it would turn out using a pizza pan or whatever. Also, when I made this, I neglected to let the dough sit for 15 minutes after I formed it into a disc; the crust was still delicious, thick and chewy, but who knows how much better it could have been!

The toppings I put on were: red peppers, fresh mushrooms, chicken, tomatoes, black olives, mozarella cheese.

I once again decamped to my parents’ house in Southern Manitoba for the weekend. It was just me and my dad as my mom is still in Vancouver spending time with my Oma. My dad had been there with her earlier in the week but came back early. He’s on vacation, but he was anxious to get back to work on finishing the basement of the house he and my mom have been living in since the end of ‘08.

There he is, hard at work putting in a door. My dad has some serious construction skills, as you can see — before he got to it, the basement was just a bare, unfinished cementland. But he can transform it into a beautiful, livable space. I have always been proud of him for having this ability. This room he’s working on will be an additional guest bedroom — useful, because the upstairs of the house only has two bedrooms and this way my brother won’t have to sleep in the floor of the family room in the basement when he and I sleep over at the same time (as clearly I get the office/bedroom on the main floor, no brainer).

Every time my parents come back from visiting my Oma they bring some objects. Amazing that there are still objects to bring, as they’ve been bringing things back for over 15 years. Anyhow, there are a few special items that I have always had my eye on for inheritance, and the time has finally come for me to take possession of a lovely one:

I have to ask Oma for the exact details of this statuette’s origins, but for me, it’s not so much the thing’s provenance as it is the childhood memories I have of admiring it in my grandparents’ home. It’s solid, made of some kind of stone, and about 20 inches tall. Its curvy lines and milky colour were pleasing to my eye even when I was five, and I remember putting my little finger tips in the rounded depressions of her cup and pitcher. It’s still a satisfying sensation! In this photo you see the statuette sitting on my parents’ hearth, and there it will stay for the time being. My apartment needs a serious spring cleaning before it is worthy of such an objet; even then, it might look better beside my mom’s fireplace. We’ll see!

One final shot: the view from the back of the house. I like the contrast of the dark prairie mud and the stark, leafless trees. But the snow is melting and spring is on its way!

I’ve been MIA on this blog for a few weeks. This absence was due to some very difficult news I received at the beginning of the month — I hate to be oblique on this, but I’m not quite ready to go into details about it in this space. Perhaps at some point I will.

Anyhow, it’s been a rough month. When times get tough, I turn to endeavours like you see pictured above, embroidering aimlessly with bright colours. Random doodles on fabric. Very comforting in the execution.

At the start of the month I spent some time at my parents’ home outside the city (this sojourn directly related to the obscurely aforementioned difficult news) and when I returned to my apartment I brought with me an object from there. It turns out that times of emotional and physical distress cause some sort of reversion to childhood impulses, like attachment to soft objects of comfort.

Check out this pillow. You may be thinking, “Hell, that is an ugly pillow.” And you would be right. But let me explain. You see how this pillow kind of looks like a chenille bedspread? Well, that’s because this technique is what one calls “handmade chenille.” Meaning, all those lines were machine sewn by my mother and then all the cuts in between them were done by her as well! The technique is basically to layer several pieces of fabric, sew the lines on very carefully, and then carefully snip the fabric through all but the bottom layer between the seams. Sounds tedious? According to Mom, it is! And she says she’ll never do it again. Of course, the technique itself is not the issue here, but the rather horrid dusty rose and moss green chintz fabric you see on the top layer, the effect of which, I will say, is significantly muted by the chenille technique. It actually kind of gives it a cool watercolour effect. Which makes me kind of want to try this technique with fabric that I actually like!

Anyhow, this pillow was just chilling out on the couch in my mom’s basement, and I grew fond of it in its texturey, under-stuffed, old-lady glory. So I took it home with me to cuddle when I feel sad. The end.

In other quilting news, last month I finished the batik quilt top I started at the Pinawa quilting retreat.

I used the pattern Splashes of Color (free on allpeoplequilt.com), though mine isn’t quite as… harmonious as the one by the designer due to a) my use of a bargain bin’s-worth of discordant fabrics from pale blue to dark green to bright orange and b) my flipping of the squares’ orientation.

This is my first quilt bigger than a baby quilt and it was onerous at times, due largely to a cutting error that required me to resquare all the blocks (though of course the serious quilter will tell you you should always square up your blocks even if you’re super accurate).

At any rate, I plan to quilt the thing according to the pattern. I just need to find a fabric for binding and backing.