Years ago, when my kids were young and I was mostly a stay-at-home mom who mostly, well, stayed at home but had little inclination towards cleaning, my preferred household duties, next to childcare, were cooking and baking, though I was better at, or maybe just preferred, baking over cooking.
In other words, my house was pretty messy back then, but boy, did it smell good!
I was a cookie, cake, and pie-baking mom par excellence, though the general consensus was that my pièces de résistance were my yeast breads and sweet rolls.
I used to spend quite a bit of time kneading dough back in the day.
But then the years went by, the kids grew up and switched to auto-pilot,
Until last week. while I was in Los Angeles helping my daughter and son-in-law settle into their new house and into life with their notorious, and notoriously cute,
Of course it was too late in the day to start a yeast dough, but I thought I recalled seeing at the supermarket a canned Pillsbury-esque pizza dough in among the cans of refrigerated crescent rolls and buttermilk biscuits.
Well, thought I, canned-crust pizza won't be in the same league as home-made deep-dish-deluxe-crust pizza, but...well, actually I was now feeling kind of intrigued as to what kind a pizza came out of a can.
The crust was thin but with the perfect fold-over consistency of a New York slice - in fact this pizza tasted better than many's the New York (I mean New York New York) slices I've had.
My grand daughters declared it the best pizza ever and polished off a third of it in one sitting, while we adults managed to take care of the rest of it in short order.
Which caused me to ponder: All those years while I was kneading mountains of dough in a state of ignorant bliss, was the rest of the world whipping together this fantastic pre-fab pizza?
The following day my grand daughters wanted another pizza so I baked them another one, and I believe I baked one more before I left.
However, as the thrill of my new pizza discovery was still fresh, the day after I arrived back home in Columbus I made a canned-crust pizza for lunch,
Ingredients
Cooking spray
1 can of refrigerated pizza crust
About 1/3 of a 28-oz. jar of Ragu Traditional sauce
Shredded parmesan cheese
One 8 oz. bag of mozzarella cheese
Oregano
Method
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Spray a 17" cookie sheet with cooking spray.