I love pizza.

You start with basic dough: 2 ½ Cups Flour 1 .25oz packet yeast 2 tbl Oil 1 ts Sugar 1 ts Salt 1 Cup Warm water about 110 degrees

Place Flour in a medium sized bowl and make a well in the center. In another small bowl mix the remaining stuff. Let mixture sit for 7 minutes then mix well with a fork. Add the mixture into the well in the flour. Mix well then turn out onto a clean lightly floured surface and lightly kneed. Oil a bowl and place the dough inside turning to coat. Let sit for about an hour or until it has doubled in size. Turn out and roll out. Note - the more you kneed the dough the more light and fluffy it will be...

Now you can get creative as you want. From a basic tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and basil to refried beans, taco flavored beef, scallions, Mexican style cheese to olive oil, feta cheese, kalamata olives, ground lamb and oregano. There are no rules to hinder your creativity! Let your next home made pizza reflect who you are - take photos and post them here...

Now to what this blog was supposed to be about...

On my last trip to NYC I stopped by Lombardi’s Pizza. I have seen this place on a few different TV shows and decided it was time to see what it was all about. I was most fascinated by their coal oven. I had a small with sausage, anchovies, and their home made roasted red peppers. I usually don’t get anchovies on pizza but I had so many different ones that afternoon at the fancy food show I said what the heck. The pizza was pretty good. Their roasted red peppers are out of this world – they roast them every day in their coal oven. The sausage is an Esposito’s sweet Italian – www.espositosausage.com. The crust has a distinct flavor that you won’t get from any other type of oven. Their standard pizza comes with a very nice San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella – a splash of romano and fresh basil. All in all it’s worth the stop even if you only go to take a look at that oven. www.firstpizza.com is their website and the address is 32 Spring St NY, NY 10012-4173 212.941.7994

As always have fun when you cook! Nikko