I have to admit, I always feel a ping of excitment when this happens:

I used to buy my own pre-made pizza crust, but you know what? It was, meh, okay, not great, just okay. Sometimes it was stale. Sometimes it would crack and break on the way home. And I was annoyed by how much sodium was in it. Does pizza crust really need so much sodium?

I’ve been experimenting with recipes for homemade pizza dough for weeks. I think I finally have it figured out. This recipe is from my old Joy of Cooking. It’s probably my favourite standby cookbook. If you like DIY pizza, I recommend trying this one. It’s really easy to make your own pizza. This ones doesn’t take that long to prepare and makes a lovely crust too.

Recipe for Pizza Dough!

You will need:

1 package (2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
1 1/3 cups warm water
3 1/2 – 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour* (unbleached bread flour worked well for this recipe)
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs salt (Optional. I add a pinch of sea salt.)
1 tbs sugar (Optional. I usually make it without. Use sugar if you like a puffier crust.)

* I normally use 1 cup Robin Hood multigrain flour and 2 cups (plus a bit) unbleached stone ground white flour.

Combine the yeast and the warm water in a large bowl. Let stand for 5 – 10 minutes until yeast is dissolved and is starting to foam up.

Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Mix until it’s all holding together. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes. Don’t skimp on the kneading! The dough should be smooth and elastic, tacky, not sticky, when you’re done.

Transfer it over to a bowl that you’ve lightly coated with additional olive oil. Turn the dough over to coat completely. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean and floured dishtowel and let rise in a warm place. I like to put mine in the oven, which has been preheated for about a minute (then turned off). Keep it in there for about 90 minutes until it’s about doubled in volume. (See pic at the top of this post. Wee! Who knew baking could be this exciting?)

Punch the dough down and divide it in half. At this point you can use all the dough to make one large thick-crust pizza, two smaller pizzas, or just use the one half to make one large thin crust pizza. (And freeze the other half for next time! This is my preference.)

Regardless of the path you have chosen, roll your dough into a ball and let it rest, loosely covered, for about 10-15 minutes. While it’s resting, preheat the oven to 450F. Dust your baking stone or baking sheet with cornmeal (don’t skip this step!), flatten the dough and roll it out flat. Brave? Let your kids have a go. They might surprise you by not dropping it on the floor.

The dough will be fairly elastic, so you’ll have to stretch it out with your rolling pin. Place the dough on your baking sheet. To prevent the toppings from making the crust soggy, brush the top of the dough with a bit of additional olive oil. Use your fingers to push dents into the surface of the dough. This will prevent air holes bubbling up as it bakes. Let it rest for 10 minutes while you prep your toppings.

Now add the toppings – whatever you like. Sometimes I do the tomato sauce thing as a base, sometimes I’ll use BBQ sauce or pesto or just plain olive oil. Meat and veggies go on top, then the cheese.

Our faves topping combinations include:

• fresh pineapple and bacon (chop it in small pieces and fry before adding to the pizza), mozzarella
• pepperoni and cheese
• BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion rings, feta cheese.

When you’re ready, pop it in the oven. Depending on the thickness of your crust, it’ll take about 12 minutes (give or take) to bake. Broiling it for a couple minutes at the end will make your cheese nice and brown.

Let me know if you decide to try this recipe! I hope you do, because it beats everything else out there.

I’m sitting here with my coffee, trying to ignore the 15-or-so centimetres of snow that fell overnight. My kids are overjoyed, me, not so much. BUT I’m not too down about this sudden onslaught. I may have news that will make all this white stuff disappear from my personal radar. I can’t spill yet, but soon. I will say this. It’s fun.

–

A reporter from CBC-TV called me on Monday to see if I’d comment on camera for story he was working on regarding property assessment. As much as I would have loved to get my mug on the evening news, timewise, I couldn’t actually swing it.

We live in a small, wartime home in Westboro (one of the areas that was hardest hit by the property assessment). We’ve lived in the area for 11 years, before the MEC moved in and changed everything along Richmond Road. The business area is flourishing. And more people want to live here. There are giant homes being built, dwarfing our own. Many are gorgeous, big, but gorgeous, and fit the character of our little corner of Ottawa but many push the boundaries of size and taste. Aesthetics aside, all these giants are driving up the value of our own tiny little home. This would be welcome news if we intend to sell, but we like this neighbourhood too much to move.

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At what age did you learn how to write cursive? Why (or why not) do you think it’s an important skill to learn?

I think I was in second or third grade when we learned how to write in cursive. I’m willing to bet, once upon a time, kids learned even younger than that.

My eldest daughter is in fourth grade, my youngest in second, and neither of them know how to write in cursive. Emma’s teacher in third grade introduced it, but then the school hired a new teacher and Emma moved into a different class. The new teacher didn’t teach cursive.

It appears to be up to individual teachers whether or not they’re going to introduce cursive writing. I wonder, when did this become optional? 

I was looking into this topic and found the following message on a parenting board:

“I have had this discussion with friends before. I think the kids should know how to print and type. Forget cursive penmanship. To me it is a waste of time. I never write in cursive, always print. My kids all print neatly and it is always legible. I have an aunt whose writing I can never read in her cards to us. Her strokes are so long and flowing that words stretch up to an inch when they only have 4-5 letters. Rarely do people these days write. Its all print or type. Besides your signature, why take valuable school time to teach a dying form? Even Doctor’s don’t write prescriptions much anymore. Its all done electronically because of how easy it was to forge or for a pharmacist to missread a prescription.”

Do people really believe that learning how to write in cursive isn’t necessary, and is becoming a dated skill… like learning Latin or how to kill a chicken?  Good penmanship used to be highly valued in our society, but our ability to write neatly, beautifully, is rapidly becoming a lost art. Is it because we’ve entered a digital age?

I’ve taken it upon myself to teach the girls how to do it (write in cursive, not kill chickens). I found a good website with free handwriting lessons. They come in the form of printable cursive sheets which kids use to practice their letters through tracing. Hopefully, all this repetition will lead to good handwriting.

There is an interesting article here, which looks at the importance of teaching handwriting skills to kids, especially as it pertains to children with learning disabilities.

There is something to be said for beautiful penmanship, isn’t there? I love a beautifully handwritten note or card, don’t you? But it’s more than that. Learning to write cursive takes a lot of work. Think of what’s involved: fine motor skills, co-ordination of hand-eye-brain (lor’ knows how many neural pathways are being defined in their little plastic brains while they’re writing), dexterity, and above all, patience and time. I think these are all things worth developing.

Emma has a spelling test every week. The other night I wrote out, in cursive, the ten words she needed to know for her test. As she slowly, carefully, copied them out (in cursive!), I realized that by taking extra time to write out the words she was also taking extra time to learn how to spell them. I think I’m going to start doing this every week.

I am lucky that she seems to be enjoying it so far.  

Perhaps we can ask Santa to bring us a really good calligraphy set. And maybe I should pick up some handwriting lessons as well. My penmanship could use some help. ;)

I’d love to hear what you think. Do your kids know how to write in cursive? Are they learning it in school? If not, will you be the one to teach them? Is cursive dead?