Dad's Pizza

Dad's Splendid Pizza

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again:

Growing up in northern New Jersey, I never lacked for good pizza. Sure, Mom or Dad could drive over to the nearest pizza joint (which packaged its fare in the same "You've tried the rest -- now try the best!" box as every other place in Jersey). But the pizza we liked the most traveled no farther than the distance between the oven and our dinner table.

[Recipe: Dad's Pizza]

Dad didn't cook very often, but on pizza nights he ran the kitchen. The results came out thicker than anything we could order up: a homemade crust covered with slightly sweet tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese and topped with Italian sausage and mushrooms. My brother John and I teamed up for the final assembly, piling on -- and snacking on -- the toppings.

This was a regular meal at the dinner table every few months. Two slices would be a full meal for anybody, so as a growing teenager I would scarf down four.

And then I went off to college, and I lost my way. I let myself think of pizza as something either delivered to the door or plucked from a freezer case. My pizza palate slumbered for years, until I moved to an apartment with a clean, usable kitchen. After some unplanned tests of its smoke alarm, I realized I ought to try Dad's old recipe.

What had I been waiting for? The dough was tolerant enough to be kneaded by unpracticed hands. (Buying pre-made dough was out of the question; I never would have heard the end of it from Dad and John.) And the intoxicating smell of the just-baked pizza brought me back home instantly.

Since then, I've graduated from jarred sauce and upgraded the kitchen hardware. A plain old pizza pan was supplemented by a pizza stone and then a perforated pan that yielded a crisper crust; a stand mixer kneads my dough.

I've also experimented with toppings. I decided a little less cheese and sausage wouldn't hurt, while the pizza at Faccia Luna in Glover Park and Arlington persuaded me to add red onion. Later, I halved the mushroom quota to appease my fungus-phobic wife. But getting the sausage at a grocery store -- as opposed to the Italian Store in Arlington or a farmers market -- still feels like cheating.

Dad passed away seven years ago, but not before we had time to talk about pizza and a lot of other things. Now my brother and I have this recipe for ourselves. Father's Day comes this weekend, but for me it happens anytime I'm scattering a few too many toppings on a circle of fresh dough.

Rob Pegoraro is a consumer technology columnist for The Post.