Thursday was pizza day!

So, on Thursday, we got ready for the pizza party with Stephano.  At noon, we paraded over to his kitchen like little ducklings to see how he makes his dough.  Seems that his secret ingredient is "live" yeast that he uses as well as another yeast that I couldn't seem to identify... well, I tried to figure it out by smelling it and God knows I have the nose for that!  He has an enormous mixer that I would die to have, so we decided to use that as opposed to kneading enough dough for 50 pizzas by hand!  He told us to be back around 2 and we'd roll them into individual pizzas.

Ray, Maggie and I went in search of a few local towns that were known for their pottery... Ummm, didn't find the pottery, but we did see some of the countryside and learned that Italians basically shut down from about 12:30p to 4:30p for lunch.  I gotta tell ya... No wonder they call it "La Dolce Vita", the sweet life, they don't work a lot.  Makes me wonder if the USA needs to adopt some of their rules!

We got back around 2:30 and Maggie and I headed over to the kitchen for the dough rolling.  Julie had beat us there and did a lot of it, but it was fun to see how Stephano does it... No pinching, just rolling into perfect little balls that he sets into plastic containers to finish rising.  Gotta tell ya, Mom, his dough tasted just like yours!

Around 7, Stephano started firing up the pizza oven.  It's a pretty impressive oven!  Think there was a lot of BBQ envy happening, considering Ray and Danny are now considering putting one in their yards!  He gets it hot enough that the entire inside of the oven is white hot.  We, of course, relaxed with wine and games until they actually got cooking!

Our cooks were Paul and Stephano.

Paul is a Canadian/Italian citizen who did an amazing job of teaching us how to throw dough!  Not to mention, it was fun to talk Canadian with him... "get in the boat, ay."  Stephano was our host and was amazing!  Not only was he the oven master, all the girls were completely smitten by him!  Sorry girls, he's got a really sweet girlfriend!  They both were very patient in teaching everyone how to roll, throw and cook the pizzas.  Here are some pictures of epole learning how to cook, not to mention enjoying the pizza!

After the pizzas were gone, we laughed, drank wine and toasted with grappa.  There were some games... "slap the bag" and one where we were meowing, barking like a dog and hugging strangers...  Needless to say, a great time was had by all!

Can't wait to try tossing my dough at home!