Making Pizza

Mac and I lacked the equipment needed for making pizzas when we opened our restaurant in 1979, we had the ovens but that was it.  Pizza pans, cutters and paddles were on order but it would take a while for them to get to the Island. In order to make some much-needed money we were serving baked goods such as muffins, cinnamon buns, croissants and banana bread.  I had learned how to make yoghurt and had added it to the breakfast menu but we had yet to try our hand at pizza.

We had met a wonderful man named John who owned a pizza parlor in California. He offered to teach us how to make pizza sauce and we jumped on that opportunity like white on rice!  We needed all the help we could get, and a chance to learn from someone with experience was not to be sneezed at. Armed with the list he supplied I went shopping for the necessary ingredients.

Oregano was not sold on Bequia, but someone had given me a bag of the dried herb and I had more coming with the pizza pans.  I gathered up onions, garlic, canned tomatoes and tomato paste and met John at the restaurant for my lesson. The sauce was easy to make, just lots of sautéed onions and garlic, canned plum tomatoes and tomato paste, salt, a bit of sugar and of course lots of oregano. Once the ingredients had thickened over the stove they were blended to make a smooth sauce.  I used this same recipe for almost 4 decades, it was great!

I experimented with crusts using a recipe from my bible, “The Joy of Cooking”. I found that if I took their recipe and tripled the amount of oil it called for the crust was lovely, nice and crispy on the outside and very tasty.  I learned that the dough was best after it had risen and been punched down a few times, the longer it sat the better it got.  It took a while for me to realize that the pizza had to be slipped off the pan for the last stage of cooking, time would be my teacher for that particular trick!

Ah, the toppings!  Bequia didn’t have much to offer in that respect, mushrooms, olives, anchovies and pepperoni being unheard of back then. Canned Danish salami (dreadful stuff the color of kaopectate), chicken and canned ham could be bought in the stores, but our very first pizza attempt was topped with one of Bluesy’s barracudas. We had to use white cheddar cheese, mozarella would not be an option at the Pizzeria for many years.

We were ready to make our trial pizzas. This was not just a big day for Mac and me – a lot of people had been looking forward to eating pizza!  As we didn’t yet have proper pans, the first pizzas were made on Mac’s big homemade cooking sheets. We made the pizzas together, Mac showing off by twirling the dough in the air, much to the delight of his audience.  He had no idea what he was doing but everyone clapped and cheered at his antics!  We shaped the crusts, spooned on the sauce, spread the cheese evenly and topped them off with seasoned raw barracuda. They went into ovens we had pre-heated to 500 degrees and everyone waited to taste the result.

OH MY!  They were so good!  The dining room had a big cluster of people wanting to taste the pizzas, and there were moans and groans of pleasure as they swallowed the long-awaited treat.  Mac’s dream was going to be a reality, we now had a glimmering of how to make a pizza, and the pizza was GOOD.