A Lesson Learned

So Sunday night I decided it would be a great idea to make homemade pesto chicken pizza on whole wheat crust. I began making the dough and decided after kneading it in the mixer that it was way too sticky and that I had done something wrong. I added a little more flour and then a little more, and so on until I decided it looked the right consistency to me. This is a little dangerous since I am by no means a dough expert (I have only made like 2 loaves of bread in my entire life). Moving on with dinner, I completed other steps in the pizza making process while the dough rose. I made a very sticky pizza crust and put it on a borrowed pizza stone to prebake for a few minutes. I prebaked for a little too long I believe since it was very brown when I took it out to add the toppings. I added all my toppings and back in the oven for 10 minutes. After about 4 minutes in the oven, smoke began escaping out the stove top. We don't have any kind of over the stove vent, so all the windows were opened. The pizza didn't look too bad, so we sat down for dinner. Slicing the pizza was VERY difficult and it took the two of us working together to chip it off the pizza stone. Zach reported that it tasted good, but my taste buds were tainted by all the happenings up to that point and I can't say I enjoyed it too much. After we chipped off all the slices, I got to cleaning the pizza stone when I heard a call from the dining room. It was Zach informing me that the dining room table was ruined where the pizza had been sitting (on a pizza rack, on a dish clothe, on a place mat). Zach and I have officially caused more damage to our dining room table than had been caused over decades of us by my grandparents and my mom and aunt.

So, you might be asking what the lesson is....Never cook anything that you have not seen someone else successfully cook.