My neighbor, Lily, has cooking in her genes and there is rarely a time I don’t smell something divine wafting from her house. She’s been sending over homemade pizza, and in this time of quarantine and pulling inward like turtles, I came across my memories from the early 1980s when I got my Cuisinart food processor and my therapy was  bread baking.

So many years have passed since my hands were in dough, sticky and happy, fashioning loaves of my fave bread recipe for “Medieval herb bread.” How did I do it? Where were the recipes? I visited my cookbooks, now yellowed and dusty and sneeze-provoking: That odor, must emanating from now old pages that cracked apart from their bindings. Books of every kind, vegetarian, French ( I’d come home to Julia Child after work and fashion a delectable dinner). Italian. Recipes ripped from The New York Times and filed in folders, recipes from every country in so many books.

Lily perfected her pizza dough from a Cuban sandwich bread recipe she found in a magazine and I am adapting it here as I had to consult various other recipes to morph it into pizza (I finally was able to find flour in the store, there appears to be a run on it. But yeast was impossible to find anywhere. Thanks to Lily’s daughter, Barb, for finding it and to Lily for sharing it.)

Dust off the food processor or mixer or just use your hands. You will be transported to a simpler time before the scariest of times.

“The sponge” (proof the yeast) Lily made this for me and gave it to me the night before. It can sit in the fridge overnight.
¼ cup water
¼ cup all=purpose flour
½ teaspoon of instant or rapid rise yeast

📍Whisk water, flour and yeast with fork in liquid measuring cup until consistency of  thin pancake batter.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (sponge will rise and collapse)

The dough
3 cups (15 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons of instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 ½ teaspoons of table salt
1 cup warm water (110°)
¼ cup olive oil

📍Whisk flour, yeast, and salt together in bowl.
Add warm water, oil, and sponge. I used food processor, you can use mixer with dough hook until no flour remains, about 2 minutes scraping down bowl. (Increase speed to medium with mixer and knead for 8 minutes.  With processor, it was quick, dough remains sticky and will stick to bottom.

📍Turn dough onto lightly floured counter, sprinkle flour on top and knead to form a ball. I had a lot of sticky fingers trying to do this and kept adding flour, eventually got it into the greased bowl and turn to coat. Cover bowl in plastic wrap.
I let rise for about an hour, to double in size.

The rest of the recipe was for bread loaves so I was on my own.  After the dough had risen I tried to roll it out on the floured counter again, this time with a rolling pin and it was too sticky. I kept adding flour and kneading, and cut the dough in half thinking it was enough for 2 small pies. I had a circular baking tray, about 12″  that came with the Breville oven which was appropriate and I began to stretch the ½ of the dough ball on the circular pan. BUT, there were “bald spots” and I felt that perhaps the entire ball of dough should be used: It was much easier to cover the pan more evenly. I guess this might take practice and i will try again.

I used ¾ of a small can of plain Cento tomato sauce and spread it over the dough.
I processed part skim mozzarella cheese in shreds and small slices and covered the top
I added mushrooms which were on hand

I preheated the Breville oven to 450° which is the highest temperature available and kept an eye on what was happening. The cheese had just begun to brown so you have to keep checking.The dough was yeasty and very tasty. I personally like a thin crispy crust but this was still excellent.