I actually made something!

Woah! After like three weeks of listening to the teacher blather on and on, I finally got to make something in my baking class!
Before I continue my happy rambles, let me rant for just a moment.
When I decided to take fundamentals of baking, I assumed that we would…well…bake. The first three weeks or so we sat…and listened to the teacher meander through the book, reading stuff at random (often reading it wrong!), attempting calculations, and just plain boring us all to death. The worst class was the one where we sat for three hours watching a set of movies about some guy making French bread where they kept reusing the video clips. Snore!
Finally, though, we got to DO something last week. We made pizza dough! It was a variation on Italian bread. Of course my dough ball has problems…first it was too dry, then too wet…it was a comedy of errors. First we’d add flour, then water, then flour again. Finally it formed into a nice puffy little ball…just in time for the class to be over.
We wrap our happy little dough balls in saran wrap (smearing them with vegetable oil first…to keep them from sticking) and leave them to rise over the weekend.
Then last night we all wandered into class, waiting impatiently for it to start so we could get on with the pizza making.
I hung around like a useless lump as people prepared the sauce – from cooking the Italian sausage and the bacon to cutting onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini. (Yes…somebody brought their own zucchini to put on their pizza. I, being sane, refrained.) At first my only contribution was to find that container of parsley that was hiding among the 30 other bottles of spices, but eventually somebody set me up sautéing onions. Maybe I should take a cooking class next year so I don’t look so lost in a kitchen!
It took us forever, but eventually we got the sauce and all the toppings done.
Then we pulled our happy not-so-little-anymore dough balls out and rolled them into happy large flat pizza crusts! Mine was less flat than most…I hate thin crust. My pizza has to be thick and slightly chewy…mmm. *wakes from daydream*
Anyways, I rolled mine out and loaded it up. (On an aside…when I was waiting in the topping line, somebody said my vaguely triangle-shaped dough looked like a heart…and after poking and pulling and prodding it into shape, I agreed. ^^) It had a medium amount of sauce (I don’t like either dry or soggy pizzas), a few of the sautéed onions, lots of sausage, bacon and pepperoni, and tons of cheese. Finally, a bunch of us dabbed a bit of the leftover bacon grease onto the crust (that is…I dabbed. Other people soaked theirs.) then popped them in the oven. After an interminable amount of cleaning – for we’d made a huge mess – our pizzas were done.
I took mine home whole and shared with the family. Mom said that “she thought something tasted off about it…I’d better make some more to figure out what.” Hm….really? Couldn’t be that it was really good and you want more, could it? *laughs*
My brother was a magician with his – it disappeared faster than doves in a Lance Burton act. Even my nibbling sister chomped hers down in record time.
Sounds like my first baking attempt was a success!