Ancient Italian secret

This morning I went walking with my brother George and our friend Gary. Gary is Italian and he knows Italian ways and here is a secret he told me. Well, it was not a secret to him. But it was to me!

Gary says you can go into any pizzeria and buy pizza dough. Just the dough, without the pizza.

"Oh yeah," he said. "Just ask for it. They'll charge you about a buck. Then you go home and make your own pizza."

Who knew you could do that?

Has anyone else ever done that or is it just him?

Gary says he has done that many times at Bob and John's on Hertel. He has no use for frozen dough because he says you have to wait half a day for it to thaw. You may as well make it yourself. That is what I sometimes do because for some reason it feels very good to knead pizza dough, not sure why, but there it is. It kneads up really easy and fast and then you just toss it in a bowl and come back for it in an hour or so.

Once Howard helped me with the dough and he threw it up in the air and thwacked it back down, just the way they do in the movies.

Now I want to make pizza!

I have given myself a craving!!

Leonard Pennario told me his mother used to make pizza and it was really good. She made all the Italian classics and all the musicians used to come over to their house. That will actually be one of the very funny parts of the book, about who was there.

I wonder if Pennario's mom would stop at the pizza place and buy dough. Unfortunately I did not know enough to ask that question.

A loss for music.