Wednesday has become my pizza
day. I usually buy a good quality frozen pizza at the Jewel while doing my
weekly shopping. When I get home, I bake it, and then eat the whole damn thing. I start
out with good intentions. Eat half of it for lunch and then save half for
breakfast the next day. (You know you've
all had leftover pizza for breakfast at least once. Don't lie.) Seriously,
there are a few very good frozen pizza brands out there. Nick and Vitos, Corner
Pub, and the one I had today. Brew Pub pizza. All thin crust, Chicago, old
school style pizza. I even cut it into squares like I did when I worked for Ray's
Pizza almost sixty years ago.
I was fifteen years old when
my neighbor who owned Ray's offered me a job. One dollar an hour and all the
beef sandwiches and RC Cola I could consume in one shift. I was fifteen, so
that was a lot. A lot of money, RC Cola, and beef. Thinking back I realize what
made the pizza taste so good. Part of my job was mixing the pizza dough. Flour,
eggs, yeast, oil, and water, mixed in a big dough mixer. Before turning on the
big mixer, I would have to pre-mix the ingredients in by hand. When the dough
was finished in the mixing machine, I had to dig it out of the giant mixing
bowl by hand and plop it down in an oil soaked wooden box. There it would sit
to rise for awhile before putting it in the refrigerator. Later I would have to
take the dough and measure out little balls of it to a certain weight, each one
a future pizza. Yes, the pizza from Ray's was very good. Only a couple of
problems. Fifteen year old Alan did all the prep work with no hair net, no
mask, and no latex gloves. That was my sweat, my hair, and my sneezes in that
dough that made it so delicious. One more thing. I loved the well done mozzarella
cheese on top of the pizzas as they came out of the oven. So I would snatch a
big gob off the top of the pizzas and eat it right then and there. Sadly a
few of Ray's customers got pizza with half the cheese missing. Fifteen year old
Alan was a little asshole.
