I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it....

So about a year ago I got the bright idea to start making homemade pizza. I could control the ingredients, my kids could have fun picking their own toppings, and it would be a fun family night for all. I bought a pizza stone and peel, loaded up on ingredients, and set out to make our first pizzas. After a little to-do with the yeast (I had to rush out at the last minute and buy more) we were successfully baking our own pizzas. And they were pretty good! The kids thought the crust was a bit hard, so I messed around with temperatures and baking times, and all in all we were doing pretty well.

Over time, pizza night devolved into me making them, and then hollering down to the basement play room for the older two to come up for dinner. We never ended up eating together because Matt and I had to wait 20 minutes for our pizza to cook after theirs was finished, and then it was so scalding hot we had to wait to eat it. And then there's the fact that the dough was never, ever the same twice. Instead of nice round pizza-looking pizzas, they were always kind of square-ish. I found that as long as I didn't vary from pepperoni or mushroom or black olive toppings, things stayed together pretty well. Well - as you can see from the photos, I may have finally found the straw that broke the camel's back. We had some Canadian bacon left over from another meal as well as a pineapple, and knowing that my husband likes Hawaiian pizza, I thought, great! We're all set! So I dice up the pineapple and load up my first pizza with half pepperoni for William, and half pineapple for Evie. I place the stone in the oven, and away we go! Everything went perfect until I went to pull it out of the oven. My guess is that the juice from the pineapple made that half soggy or whatever, and when I tried to pull it off the stone the whole thing just fell apart. All over my 475 degree oven. That I had just cleaned 2 weeks ago. So. Since the pepperoni half was still good, the little ones dined somewhat halfheartedly on that, and Matt called up Mario's and ordered a pizza for the older 2 and a stromboli for himself. I was so mad I went down and did the FIRM for an hour. Nothing like a 'ham-tap-repeater' series or 'tall box climb' to work off some steam. And once the oven cooled off I had the lovely task of scraping burnt cheese and pineapple off the bottom and hoping I didn't set off the smoke detectors when I turned it on again.

So, will I make pizza again? Yes, I'm going to try another dough recipe from FabulousFoods.com that I can make in my bread machine (another piece of equipment sitting on my kitchen counter from an earlier bright idea). I'll be sure to let you know how that turns out. =-)