As the weather gets colder here, my urge to bake kicks in. Yesterday I got a hankering for monkey bread. (Hey, even Cindy Crawford likes it!) Unfortunately they don’t seem to sell any kind of pre-prepared bread dough at my grocery store, so I decided to make it from scratch. I’d never even done a yeast bread before! My only previous yeast experiment was pizza dough (and I think we all remember how that went). But I persevered. I kneaded and I mixed (“Thanks, Stickmaster!”) and I pushed and I pulled. Eventually I got the damn thing in the oven. It actually turned out quite tasty, but there was one crucial flaw: it fell apart! The little balls didn’t stick together! I don’t know if my dough was too floury or what. Snookums thought it was great, but he’d never had it before. He didn’t realize that it’s not supposed to be a mound of individual cinnamon balls, but rather a cohesive loaf. It’s good to feel appreciated, though.

Sidenote: Bread is so damn labor-intensive! I don’t think I’ll be doing this very often. I’d rather pay a dollar for a loaf than spend three hours tending a big pile of goo.

In need of a challenge, I decided that tonight I would attempt a culinary feat that has set cooks a-trembling since the Dawn of Man: making my own homemade pizza from scratch. Armed only with the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the memories of watching my mom do it a bazillion times, I proceeded to make a large, floury mess of my kitchen. The kneading part was enjoyable, though I proceeded to get goo all through my hair. Once the yeast beast was “resting” in a covered dish, I suddenly remembered that I had only one pan suitable for baking a pie on. “Oh well,” I thought. “There isn’t that much dough, really. I’ll just use it all on one pizza.” (Take a note, kids. Never double up on your pizza dough.) Strike one. While that monstrous slab was baking in the oven, I turned my attention to the toppings. Wanting to be professional, I sliced my onions very thin. Thin to the point of shriveling into tiny charred strands of nothingness after being baked. Strike two. (Always remember to cut veggies into substantial chunks to avoid oven disintegration.) And lastly, as I was spreading the cheese over the top of this aberration (the dough had formed a lovely dome in the center, so everything slid towards the crust), I realized that simply picking the “white” shredded cheese doesn’t guarantee mozzarella in this country, but instead nine times out of ten you’ve got low-fat cheddar. Which kinda sucked. Strike three, I’m out.

Actually it was edible. As someone once said, “Pizza is like sex. Even when it’s bad it’s still pretty good.” (I’m paraphrasing.) This was edible, though the ratio of crust-to-topping was off by about a factor of four. The Snook, bless him, politely praised it and only revealed his true feelings when he let slip a tiny “Were you supposed to put salt in this?” Ouch. Well, there’s always Papa.