It was right after I’d Googled “What happens if you don’t let the pizza dough rise long enough?” and just before I ripped a hole in the center of the dough I was stuffing into a cast-iron pan that obviously had way too much oil in it that I came to an important conclusion, which is that I fucked up.

Have you ever had pizza that weighed more than your cat? Wait.

The Price Chopper dough mooshed around the hole I was trying to fix, which I filled with sauce, hoping to create a kind of sauce floor that would crust over to form a bridge between doughs in the 540-degree oven I am very scared of. I figured if I pushed enough chorizo and onion right into the dough, I’d be living my truth. The truth of how disgusting I am.

So there I am, just squishing onion in dough, feeling the heat of the kiln blowing back the hair on my unshaved legs. I fucking open the oven door, shove the cast iron onto the lowest, most frightening rack, and squat to watch it all unfold through the glass. Which was really hot on my rosacea, even though the rosacea has been a bit better lately — possibly because of this anti-termite cream my doctor charged me $290 for — but when I bask it in the high heat of a malformed, over-oiled pizza, it does get a little itchy.

The Internet says when the cheese starts to bubble, you’re ready to blubble. Lol I mean eat! When it bubbles it’s time to eat. Blub blub blub. But the Internet didn’t say anything specific about what to do when the oil started to bubble. Don’t fires start this way??? This is exactly what my mother was talking about when she told me at Christmas that I still act like a 13-year-old.

Lucky me, the cheese did start to bubble and congeal, so I got four towels to grab the pan, picturing myself dropping the whole mess on my deformed toes (which I was born with). But it was so much more embarrassing than I imagined it could be.

This:

 

 

You ever seen height like that on a dough? Just look at it.

The crust: So pale. So chewy. So oily.

David just looked over my shoulder and goes, “Is that your knee?”

Mmmm. 5 and a half inches of dough:

One quality I like in a pizza is when it is deadlift-able:

What David describes as “a fun experiment!” and “like fried dough?” and “I feel like it’s expanding in my stomach,” I describe as the last night I ever try making pizza, which is bad for me anyway on account of the PCOS which the doctor says could give me diabetes like any minute.