This winter and spring, I went on a bit of a pizza odyssey.   Our family has always been a fan of Friday night pizza night, and sometimes I make it or sometimes I have it delivered.  This spring I decided to lean in a bit on pizza and really embrace making some different options.  I realized that as long as I made one cheese pizza, my kids would always be able to eat something that they liked, and I could get as crazy as I wanted with the other.

I had a lot of fun making traditional pizzas, and non-traditional pizzas, but it was really the fun of digging into a certain thing and really investigating it fully and playing with it.  My family didn’t mind one bit that it was pizza I needed to get to know better.  They would help make the sauce or assemble the pizzas and they never minded helping eat it of course.  We would often pile on the couch together to eat it, watching a movie, and, I hope, creating memories for the rest of our lives.  I just love family rituals.

As I said, I always made one pizza just plain cheese, but the other I played with.  I had a grand time reading Pizza Camp by Joe Beddia.  I highly recommend it–the spring cream is fantastic on a pizza with asparagus.  I also loved his tomato sauce, although, it is not my kids favorite, as they prefer a heavier handed slightly sweeter sauce, and I still want to do the mushroom cream sauce one day.  My husband’s and my favorite pizza was probably this one, but then we would turn around and make a sausage an olive the next week and think…why do we make anything else?  Basically, the bottom line is, pizza is GOOD.

Which brings me to this week’s giveaway.  No, I didn’t deliver pizza to my recipient, but that does seem like something I might need to try!  How fun would it be to knock on someone’s door and surprise them with a homemade pizza?  But this week, I decided to make it a less of a surprise and invite my recipients over for dinner to receive their gift.

I have been gifted with the very best in-laws in the world.  It is absolutely true.  And ever since the birth of my children when my mother in law watched them daily while I worked, they have had a very close relationship with them.  My kids are grandparent spoiled as they live within 15 miles of all of their grandparents and see them all regularly.  However, this last year, my wonderful in-laws needed to temporarily relocate about 5 hours away.  And while it isn’t even a plane ride, it was a big thing for our family.  We all had a bit of a tough time adjusting to the distance.  Well, after 10 months gone, they are officially back home this week and now reside a few short blocks away–YAY!  My kids are ecstatic.

As if the homecoming wasn’t cool enough, my father in law has kindly asked me to show him how to make some bread.  He has always had a passion for making bread and works tirelessly making a fabulous braided Christmas loaf that people literally beg for, but he is after some training in some other types of bread as well.  When he asked for my pizza dough recipe, it just seemed like the perfect match.  So Friday night, they came over, and my father in law and I made the pizza together.  I got to show him how I make my preferred dough, what I add, what I don’t, how I like to bake it in the oven and the like.  I had some dough pre-made, so I got to pretend I was on a cooking show and use my best Ina Garten voice.  I may even have said, “How easy is that?”  And then we ate pizza and talked and chatted all around the table together.  It was wonderful and felt like just what a Friday night should be, relaxed, at home, and happy.

For those of you who have attempted to make pizza at home and never liked the results, I understand.  I found my results in this arena to be “fine.” for many years, but eventually, after learning some tricks, I feel like I have perfected what I am after.  My littlest even (grudgingly) admits its better than delivery.  And that my friends, is a big deal in this house.  I have tried to write up my Friday Night Homemade Pizza here, but I encourage you to play with this and make it your own.  Invite people over on Friday night and I can almost guarantee that no one will complain about all the practice!

PS, unrelated, I posted a first-day-of-fall recipe today that I highly encourage you to try if you like fall baking: Apple Brown Butter Bourbon Brioche.  It was a bit of a kitchen triumph this week!