There are cooks and there are bakers. Few can do both equally well. I hate baking because it requires a precision that isn’t in my temperament; I’m more from the a-little-bit-of-this and a-little-bit-of-that school. “Elasticity” is the buzzword in cooking, i.e. within a certain range of ingredients and technique, its pretty hard to screw up. But baking! That’s a whole different story. “Add water slowly until the consistency is just right”.  What the Hell does “just right” look like anyway? My wife seems to know, and she’s an excellent baker. My grandmother’s recipe for her shortbread cookies reads: “Add as much butter as the flour will take”. How do I know when its taken enough…do I ask it? But bakers just seem to know these things.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided to make pizza dough yesterday. I followed the basic recipe in the Cuisinart book, also available on-line here. Piece of cake (pun intended). No, really, pretty easy, and it made for an outstanding pizza dough, although for the life of me I couldn’t get the pizzas round…they all turned out square. And the ultimate compliment…my normally surly son and his girlfriend both waxed enthusiastic about how good the pizza was.