Pizza and Tragedies

We decided to make pizza last week and considering my recent sense of adventure in the kitchen, I offered to make home made dough. I have a recipe in my snappy new Jamie Oliver recipe book.

So since the dough only had to rise once, I started making it around 5:00, thinking we would be eating by 6:30. Well, the dough would not rise. At 8:00 it had only risen to about 30% it's original size, we were pacing the house with hunger.

Unfortunately we had to ditch the dough and just make a salad.

The next night we tried again - same thing. I do everything they say - put it in a warm place (on top of the stove with the oven on for extra warmth), cover it with plastic wrap if you want to speed things up etc. etc.

That night I started it earlier so had more time and it ended up turning out all right (after 3 hours of rising time!! wth??) but I was obsessed about why it wouldn't work. I woke up at 4:00 am the next morning - I knew it! I could see (in my mind) the scribbles I wrote in the book as I lay in bed.....I didn't put in enough yeast. It doesn't help that I have to convert from Jamie's ounces...to an 8g package....to teaspoons, then half that to get the right amount.....I guess it also doesn't help that I suck at math.

I finished The Woodlanders yesterday on the ferry. There is a part near the end....oh god. I know I gasped out loud and people were probably staring. It's so tragic, everyone is so wretched and it's so, so worth the re-read. (Chris)