Making Vegan Pizza: An Odyssey into Insanity
What follows is a recreation of part of the missive I found, scrawled hurriedly in patchy, self-repeating and variously nonsensical chunks as some kind of psychotically confessional marginalia, over twenty-five pages of a copy of Joanna Russ’ The Female Man which I had borrowed from the local library. I have cleaned and clarified the form up to the point of comprehensibility, but have left most of the misspellings and metathesis and the elisions and eccentricities intact, in order to best communicate the strangeness of these bizarre ramblings.
I was a vegetablearian for one ten twelve yearss, and happy like a nightmere that cant be resissted, truly deleriously happy, disastrusly happy. But for eggs. I couldn’t stop thinking about eggs. Ovuam, Dead chicken zygoats,, life that never got a chanse. So no eggs, I thought, eazy, but it was hard and harder than I thougt, dificult tothe degree that I thought I’d go mad. BUT ISAID NO!!! I SAID I CAN STOP ANYTIME I WANT?. & to proov it, I eye aye went vegan. poor little chikens. and I made all the foods i likeded befoor that. I made doe dowgh dowe doue like this.
ONE: hunt and gather one cup of warm water (NOT HOT OR YEEST WILL DIE NOT COLD OR YEEST WONT WAYKE UP + 2.5 teasepoons of yeest (active + dry & Halfe a table’sspoon granulated sugar (optional). Three cupses of bready bread flower and one teasespoon of salt from the sea and 1 tables’spoon olive oil. Put water in a measuwring cup, sprinkle in yeest and sugar and stir GENTLY until both dissolve (sixty seconds). It should be a smooth, beigey mix. Let stand for fünf minuten until layer of creamee foem forms at the top, which meens that the yeest is affective. NO BUBBLES MEANS FAILIURE = START AGAIN.
TWO: mix III cups of flower with the sea’s salt in bowl. Make a d-p impression in the centra + pour in the yeest soopandoliversoil. Yu better be using a biggish bowl!?! Wooden spoon, stir flower gregariously int’ t’well, begginging in center and working toward outwards. (point of import>blendwell nolumps. Reader, I married him. ROFL. Next, dough is on a lightly flowered surface. Dust hands and feat with flour and need gently like. Turn (doe, stupid) and “RE: Pete” until, is it silky & lastic? (two hands wurth (ten) of minutes). !TOO MUCH NEEDING MAKES A TUFF CRUST!
THREE: Shape mixxed dough into a ball and sit it in an oiled bowl. Spin the ball to coat with oyl toatelly (BECAUSE IT maatters). Cover with invisable foyle and put a teasetowl over the indivisible foyel. Leaf to rise without draft plus with warmth until it exponentials once (60-120minits or 3600 to 7200 seckonds) When doue has wrissen, beat it flat with you’re mightey fistses to push allof the ire air bubles owt. Thie doe will last for thirty-six hours, or a monthe if freezed immidietly. This recipes makes onelarger piazza OR two mediums, and spare’s baby chikens lives and cheese-animals from haffing theyr teats tweeked. Flatin and shape into piazza-shape and make piazza.
The recipe for the dough actually works quite well; I added some rosemary at the mixing stage, then spread a mixture of passata di pomodoro and a more course tomato purée onto the base before grating some fake mozzarella cheese over that and finishing with some sliced chilli peppers, some fake pepperoni and a brush of olive oil around the exposed crust. After that it was just a case of preheating the oven to 260°C, spreading a little flour over a pizza tray (a flat baking tray would also be fine) and then cooking for 10-15 minutes until the not-cheese had melted and the base was nicely browned. The next day I took the book back to the library, where they accused me of ruining the book before they took away my library card for knocking over a stand of Jacqueline Wilson novels. No matter, I’ll get another fake ID and disguyes my face again and go back in a few weaks.
