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Cooking 101, Tuesday, Period 1
Tuesday, September 11th, 2018 03:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glacial_queen"Okay, so last week was kind of a disaster," Karla said at the start of class, because she believed in honesty. "But it still isn't as bad as the time I helped blow up a kitchen with a casserole, so we're going to keep going!"
All right, that was probably not the anecdote the class wanted to hear about when they were already three weeks in. Oops?
"Today, we're going to go for another easy lesson: pizza. Pizza is easy! You just take some dough, add stuff to it, and bake! And, to make things extra easy, we're even using pre-made dough, because we don't have time to peer into drawers and see if our dough has proven yet. We're a class, not an adorable baking show."
Because, yes, they watched GBBO even in Glacia.
"So, the first thing you have to do after getting your dough out of the packaging is to spread it out and make it pizza shaped. You're supposed to use your hands and throw it around in the air to shape it. I dunno, maybe it picks up freeform yeast that way?"
And then the class was treated to Karla going through five different packages of pizza dough attempting to flip it in the air. The first time, she dropped it on the floor. The next, she threw it so high it got caught in the fan. The third landed on her head and oozed down her shoulders. The fourth hadn't finished thawing, so she put it into the oven to help it along. And the fifth fell on the floor again as she belated remembered the fourth and opened the oven door to find the plastic bag had melted and mixed with the now-thawed pizza dough.
"Okay, so another, less fancy way to get your pizza to be pizza-shaped is to bust out a rolling pin and just roll it out," she declared, finally giving up. That was also a trial because Karla didn't know to flour either the work surface or the rolling pin and there was a few fun moments when the pin was nearly engulfed by the dough, but the liberal application of olive oil (to make it slippery!) eventually led to something roughly pizza-shaped. Ish. It also nearly led to an injury as the oiled rolling pin slipped through her fingers, but she used Craft to knock it away from the students.
It went through a window instead. But details.
By this point, Karla was panting a little bit. Weren't pizza's supposed to be easy? "Okay, next, add your toppings," she said. "Sauce - " She just dumped the entirety of a jar of spaghetti sauce onto the oily dough and spread it out into one thick layer. "Cheese - " Several handfuls of shredded cheese came next. "And then whatever else you want to add!" She tossed on some raw sausage, a handful of mushrooms, and as many olives as she could fit. "Oh! And then you have to curl up the edges some to get a crust. I guess you can just roll everything up with it if you have to," she said, trying to make a crust with dough slick with oil and sauce and covered in random stuff. "Or you can just leave it alone and not have a crust," she decided when she couldn't get hers to stay rolled.
"Then you put it into your oven which--oops. Supposed to preheat that." Surely it would be fine if she put the pizza in while the oven was heating. She'd just keep it in a little longer and it would be fine! "Okay, so this pizza's a little lumpy, but that's probably fine. I mean, who cares about whether or not a pizza's pretty, right?" Karla carefully picked her monstrosity up and carried it over to an oven that wasn't full of melted plastic, carefully setting it onto the oven rack.
Directly onto the oven rack.
"Then you cook it! Uhh, probably at 350, because that seems to be the temperature you cook everything?" Karla said, realizing at the last moment she'd forgotten to check. "Keep an eye on it and then when it's done, enjoy fresh pizza!"
All right, that was probably not the anecdote the class wanted to hear about when they were already three weeks in. Oops?
"Today, we're going to go for another easy lesson: pizza. Pizza is easy! You just take some dough, add stuff to it, and bake! And, to make things extra easy, we're even using pre-made dough, because we don't have time to peer into drawers and see if our dough has proven yet. We're a class, not an adorable baking show."
Because, yes, they watched GBBO even in Glacia.
"So, the first thing you have to do after getting your dough out of the packaging is to spread it out and make it pizza shaped. You're supposed to use your hands and throw it around in the air to shape it. I dunno, maybe it picks up freeform yeast that way?"
And then the class was treated to Karla going through five different packages of pizza dough attempting to flip it in the air. The first time, she dropped it on the floor. The next, she threw it so high it got caught in the fan. The third landed on her head and oozed down her shoulders. The fourth hadn't finished thawing, so she put it into the oven to help it along. And the fifth fell on the floor again as she belated remembered the fourth and opened the oven door to find the plastic bag had melted and mixed with the now-thawed pizza dough.
"Okay, so another, less fancy way to get your pizza to be pizza-shaped is to bust out a rolling pin and just roll it out," she declared, finally giving up. That was also a trial because Karla didn't know to flour either the work surface or the rolling pin and there was a few fun moments when the pin was nearly engulfed by the dough, but the liberal application of olive oil (to make it slippery!) eventually led to something roughly pizza-shaped. Ish. It also nearly led to an injury as the oiled rolling pin slipped through her fingers, but she used Craft to knock it away from the students.
It went through a window instead. But details.
By this point, Karla was panting a little bit. Weren't pizza's supposed to be easy? "Okay, next, add your toppings," she said. "Sauce - " She just dumped the entirety of a jar of spaghetti sauce onto the oily dough and spread it out into one thick layer. "Cheese - " Several handfuls of shredded cheese came next. "And then whatever else you want to add!" She tossed on some raw sausage, a handful of mushrooms, and as many olives as she could fit. "Oh! And then you have to curl up the edges some to get a crust. I guess you can just roll everything up with it if you have to," she said, trying to make a crust with dough slick with oil and sauce and covered in random stuff. "Or you can just leave it alone and not have a crust," she decided when she couldn't get hers to stay rolled.
"Then you put it into your oven which--oops. Supposed to preheat that." Surely it would be fine if she put the pizza in while the oven was heating. She'd just keep it in a little longer and it would be fine! "Okay, so this pizza's a little lumpy, but that's probably fine. I mean, who cares about whether or not a pizza's pretty, right?" Karla carefully picked her monstrosity up and carried it over to an oven that wasn't full of melted plastic, carefully setting it onto the oven rack.
Directly onto the oven rack.
"Then you cook it! Uhh, probably at 350, because that seems to be the temperature you cook everything?" Karla said, realizing at the last moment she'd forgotten to check. "Keep an eye on it and then when it's done, enjoy fresh pizza!"