Hey there! I’m going to need to get some ingredients for the Pizza Party. I can either have someone with a car take me to a grocery store or just uber to somewhere close. There’s an interesting place that isn’t too far called Denver Central Market. I might start there, then go to a normal grocery store for whatever I don’t find at the Central Market.
We have two ovens, so we can cook two pizzas at a time. I think making two sets of two pizzas at a time will be the max in terms of timing. I’m going to make a ball of dough as the demo. But because it has to rest before you can cook it, I’m going to buy 4 balls of ready to cook dough that we can use to make some sample pizzas. In a standard oven, it can take up to about 15 minutes per pizza, so that won’t go very far, so I’ll order the rest of them.
We have roughly 50 people who have filled out the form. According to ChatGPT, that should equate to 2.5 slices per person and 8 slices per pizza, so 16 pizzas. If we make 4, that leaves 12. I think getting 4 pizzas from 3 different pizzerias would be nice so you can compare them side-by-side.
My thinking is an agenda like this:
- Start cooking the first two pizza doughs (this is a pre-cook to the dough so it is crispier because standard ovens don’t get hot enough) This takes about 3 to 4 minutes
- Add the toppings to the pizzas and then continue cooking it. This takes about 15 minutes
- While the first 2 pizzas are baking baking in the oven, start the demo of making dough from scratch. This will be getting everything ready to start mixing. Here is the recipe we use: Pizza Dough – Lidia (lidiasitaly.com)
- Take the finished pizzas out of the oven and start on the second set of pizzas.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 from above
- Start mixing and kneading the dough from step 3 above.
- Finish the second two pizzas.
- At this point, if we spend around around 20 minutes for each batch of pizzas, we’ll probably be at least 45 minutes into the demo.
- If there’s down time and interest, I’ll make a simple pasta dough and show examples of ways to cut the dough if you don’t have any special tools. Then we can cook it and make a simple sauce for it.
I’m going to get extra ingredients so people who want to participate, especially in making the pizza or pasta dough, can join in. I think the only limitation we’ll have is actually having working space to do it. I’ll make a vegetarian lemon pizza because it’s really good and a good option for the people who don’t like meat or tomatoes. The other will probably be a standard pepperoni since that seems to be most people’s favorite. There are a few pizzerias that are based in the RiNo district and deliver. I thought I’d order a few pizzas from each pizzeria so people can see the differences and compare the way they’re made and topped.How does all that sound?
Here are the pizzerias I’m looking at:
Beau Jo’s (Arvada) https://order.toasttab.com/online/beau-jos-pizza-arvada
Vero https://verocolorado.com/
Redeemer Pizza https://www.redeemerpizza.com/
Giordanos https://giordanos.com/
I might order a couple things from Lou’s Specialties to have a non-pizza option https://lousitalianspecialties.com/
