Tonight we had pesto pizza with Piña Coladas: a very nice Sunday meal. We learned a while ago from Americas Test Kitchen a way to make a perfect pizza that we have been using ever since. It's very simple and involves olive oil for kneading and a hot pizza stone for cooking. First, start out with a batch of pizza dough (Pizza Dough Recipe here) To kneed out: Place some parchment paper on a table, place some olive oil on your hands and cover the dough in the oil. Hold the dough with one hand and pull it out gently to the sides. Move your hand as you go along until you have something resembling a flattened round-ish piece. Place it down on the parchment paper and start pulling the corners out until you have a pretty thin shape, slightly thicker on the edges. Once you have achieved a desirable shape, place your knuckles on the dough and move around to distribute the air bubbles. Top your pizza with your desirable sauce, toppings and cheese (today we used pesto, cooked balsamic onions, sun dried tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese.) Slide your pizza peel under the parchment paper, pick up the pizza and slide it right onto a pizza stove in your 500 degree F hot oven (the parchment goes into the oven as well under the pizza). Let it cook for 8-12 min depending on your oven and the thickness of your pizza. Once  it's cooked, slide your pizza peel back under the parchment paper, pick up the pizza and slide it out to a cutting board. Let sit for a few minutes before cutting into. We have found that this method works very well to achieve a crispy, chewy pizza (although the chewy part is also dependent upon the dough.) The bottom of this pizza is not soft or uncooked at all, it's very crisp and holds together very well when you pick up a slice. To go with this we drank Piña Coladas which are always good, and this is a particularly good recipe: Perfect Piña Coladas
| 
