Lindsey Minchello's Food Blog

My family has a pizza oven and with our Italian background my dad likes to fire it up as much as he can in the summer. We usually invite neighbors over and have small get-togethers. This connects to my Italian heritage a little bit, there is a little more authenticity than by just ordering pizza by delivery. My dad loves an excuse to show off his Italian side and making pizza is one of them. My mom and sisters and I usually help with preparing the pizza dough and the sauce and toppings. While my brother and dad do the actual cooking part. Its definitely a family event which happens almost weekly in the summer which I am both grateful for and a little annoyed because one can only eat so much pizza! It usually helps when we have relatives and neighbors over because there is always way too many leftovers. It kind of reminds me of “Eat Drink Man Woman” minus all of the big announcements. The process of cooking a pizza is not all too challenging but there can be a lot of technical difficulties. Such as, the pizza oven being too hot causing the pizza to burn or the sauce being too watery. There is some sort of science behind the process that has been a work in progress that my family and I are all learning from! We have also tried a whole lot of different recipes and the sauce is a secret recipe according to my dad, though I’m sure he would be willing to share with whoever asked! We have tried a lot of different toppings besides cheese, pepperoni and sausage. We have done tomato and mozzarella and clam and even pickle pizza with more creations to come. Pickle pizza was my idea because I had it while visiting some friends and its more of a don’t knock it till you try it type of food. Anyway the pizza oven has definitely brought my family together a little more and it makes for fun cookouts.