Pizza YOLO

Posted on by derryX

Last month, I resolved that my end-of-the-year vacation would be a pizza vacation. I had intended to eat pizza everyday while I was off from work. I wound up chickening out after just a few of days of it, but I did make those few days count!

One day, I made it over to DC’s Pizza in Albany. You’ll remember that these guys made it to the finals in All Over Albany’s Tournament of Pizza in 2013 (in which I served as a judge).

DC's pizza

While I was there, I tried a plain and a sausage slice.

Plain slice from DC's pizza

Sausage slice from DC's

The two slices and a water were under $5, a decent value. The dough and sauce this time around were pretty good, but the sausage on the sausage slice is really something special, and it’s made in house.

Another day, I shot over to Crispy Basil Pizza to try one of their different types of Buffalo chicken pizza.

But the real crazy pizza meal was my homework meal. I had to comb over the instructions my cousin Bobby and I put together for our upcoming pizza class (now sold out) and make sure they were easy to follow.

Pizza stone, peel, and circular cutter

6 doughs ready to go

I made three different types of pizza that night for just me and Cassie.

The first was one that’ll be part of the class: fig jam, arugula, and proscuitto.

fig jam, arugula, and proscuitto

fig jam, arugula, and proscuitto

The next was Buffalo chicken with homemade chicken cutlets and some blue cheese crumbles.

Buffalo chicken pizza baking

Buffalo chicken pizza

The one that I was experimenting with was “carbonara-style” with bacon, eggs, romano cheese, and black pepper.

Carbonara style pizza

Carbonara style pizza

Carbonara style pizza

I left it in a minute too long, and the egg yolks cooked hard. Just a minute less, and it would have been perfect! When it’s only in the super hot oven on the hot stone for 6 or 7 minutes, that extra minute makes a humongous difference! However, the flavors were great.

That was just about it as far as the amount of pizza I ate during the holidays and my vacation, though. But hey, if you gotta eat pizza, YOLO, man.

YOLO.

YOLO Hamster

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4 thoughts on “Pizza YOLO”

  • Mike

    I’ll take any of those though the carbonara would be first choice. I’ve lived in the Mid-South for 19 years and I can’t believe I’ve never seen a country ham and hoop cheese pizza…it’s a natural around here. The hoop cheese is just a cheddar that comes in a big wheel and in country stores, there’s a big slice of it inside a plastic cake holder with a knife and you cut off what you want and have it with soda crackers and a co-cola!
    When you use the chunks of sausage, do you remove it from the casing and cook it in a separate skillet or put it on the pizza raw? They just use those sausage pellets or the sliced, dry stuff around here…


    • derryX

      I do all different stuff with the sausage. I always use cooked sausage to top the pizza. I don’t mind that it comes out a little over cooked; actually, I like it to crisp up and develop a crust of its own during the bake.

      When I’m making my own sausage, I seldom stuff it, mainly because with the equipment I have, it’s kind of a pain. After I mix the meat and let it cure for a day in the fridge, I saute it up in a skillet and use it as a topping. If I have leftover sausage from sauce or something, I’ll slice it up and throw it on. If I’m starting with store-bought sausage, I’ll either take it out of the casing and brown it up, or roast it whole and slice it for use as a topping.

      Whatever works, really!


  • Ron

    How did the fig, arugula, and prosciutto pie turn out? There aren’t any “cooked” pictures, and to me, it sounds the tastiest!


    • derryX

      That is the cooked picture. For this pie, I bake the crust with a light amount of the fig jam, then dress the pizza with the arugula and prosciutto (at room temperature).

      I’m not really a fan of prosciutto cooked down (it tends to get leathery), so I just let the residual heat from the crust lightly wilt the greens and barely warm the prosciutto.


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