Second Chances

Due to the absence of a car, George and I missed our Safeway run last week. Fortunately, while our fridge emptied, our stomachs remained full with some timely intervention. Most notably, a lunch trip to Round Table, Kesav getting late-night Domino's, and free Pizza Chicago thanks to Mirrielees. Which means that our "cooking" was reheating pizza for a couple days, but it turns out there's some art to that. So this time, all you (two) fine readers will get a discourse in pizza take two.

So at the bottom of the pile is cold pizza. I know few who say they like it, but that seems like a lie. I don't know anybody who likes cold bread, and there's something special about gooey cheese. No comparison.

Next after that comes the microwave, with the primary weakness that all it does get it hot. My experience has been that microwave pizza ends up burning the roof of the mouth with the cheese while the crust remains chewy. Or it doesn't get hot enough. No thanks.

With the Round Table, I went back to the oven. That, however, seems to take quite awhile, and it's fair to say that a second chance in the oven can't quite restore pizza to its quality the first time around.

I'd like to preface the final portion of this: I did not develop this method myself. But then again, many of our creations are adaptations of online recipes. So the real cook here is Google.

So the last tactic I found was the pan. The flat bottom mimics a pizza stone fairly well, and with some patience, the results are amazing. The obvious difficulty of the pan is that the surface (touching the pizza crust) is the hottest, while the rest doesn't really warm up. To avoid burning the crust, turn the heat down to medium-low. To increase the heat to the rest of the pizza, apply the lid.

The results are amazing. I say (and George agrees) that Domino's came out better the second time than the first. I thoroughly dislike Domino's Pizza, but the reheated pizza I ate was fantastic. The crust comes out to an almost cracker-like crunchiness, but still feels right with the thicker layer and dough. The cheese–if you're willing to wait for it–melts into a goo, and only being on medium-low heat, the pizza is just cool enough to hold in your hand and eat right out of the pan, but well-within good warmth. Pen it up: to my taste buds, pizza goes right there next to tamales as far better the second time.