Throw This Party: The Pizza Party
by KatieWalsh
What up, party peoples? Know what you’re never too old for? A Pizza Party! That’s right, it’s tried, it’s true, and it’s a damn good time that’ll leave you and your guests delightfully stuffed, your fridge full of leftovers for breakfast, and your kitchen a total, flour-covered mess. Let’s do the damn thing!
DRINKS: Tell your friends to bring the booze. Of course, have some Hostess Wine for Hostess Time.
FOOD: OK, so the entire party is basically food. It’s your activity, your entertainment, your decor, your dress. Everything revolves around the pizza. So we’ll just focus on that.
1. Dough and Sauce. I’m one of those make-everything-from-scratch types, but it’s totally fine and probably less stress inducing if you’re not. Skip ahead to step 2, you liberated souls. BUT, I will say, if you love compliments, make your dough and sauce from scratch — it’s easy and people think it’s magic. The night before your pizza party, have yourself a dough and sauce party. My easy dough recipe adapted from my friend Christina is pretty kick ass: Turn on a podcast and then dump a package of yeast in a bowl, pour in a warm beer, and stir it around with your finger. When it’s kind of foamy looking, dump in 3 cups of flour, a dash or 2 of salt and some glugs (scientific term) of olive oil. Maybe some garlic salt or chopped herbs? Stir it up with a stirring implement, then dump some flour on your (clean!) counter and start kneading that bastard, dumping more flour or olive oil as needed, until it is a nice blob of dough that isn’t sticky and has a nice smooth skin. This blob will make 2 pizzas, so make as many of those as you think you need. 2 blobs is good for me. Stick it in a gallon freezer bag and press all the air out and seal it. Then put it some place to rise. Pro-tip: Flour the inside of the bags, you’ll thank yourself later.
Now for the sauce! Sautee diced onions and garlic, dump in canned tomatoes of some kind and tomato paste, shake all the dried herbs that seem appropriate from your cabinet in (Italian Seasoning? Herbs de Provence?) along with salt, freshly ground black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Simmer for however long you feel like. Do you have an immersion blender? If I had one, I’d use that to make it smooth! But I don’t so I mash it with a potato masher because it seems like a good idea. It can’t hurt! I also always make pesto, too, and you can use any kind of nuts or greens. Traditional basil/pine nut is obviously delicious, but pine nuts are expensive in my hood, so I do walnuts or brazil nuts. I have a spinach/walnut standby that’s great, or broccoli or arugula work as well. I also cook my garlic in olive oil on low heat to take the raw garlic edge off. Put that stuff in a food processor or blender and blend with salt and pepper to taste. You do not need cheese! Yay, now you’re done prepping. Put your dough in the fridge, jar up the sauces and get ready for tomorrow!
2. PIZZA! So you told all your friends to bring booze and toppings, right? Before the guests come, crack your Hostess Wine and start prepping whichever toppings need to be prepared in advance, like caramelizing onions, chopping peppers, breading and frying eggplant. Doing all this stuff when the party is in full swing sucks. I would also recommend making a pizza or two to have out when people get there because if you wait for everyone to show up and start making pizza, it takes forever and everyone’s starving and the pizza comes out and everyone burns their tongue because they ate it too fast and they only got one piece and they’re still hungry. So pre-pizza is a good idea.
I usually just do my pizzas on cookie sheets, which requires a bit of TLC and more olive oil to get the dough to fit perfectly. If you or a friend has a pizza stone, start preheating that mother. Now, here’s the issue with pizza parties. Your oven is going to be on like, 400 degrees for several hours. Is your kitchen properly ventilated? It gets HOT. Wear a tank top. Preheat the stone on 500, and bake your pizzas around 400-ish. Be sure to make sure you have parchment/baking paper to go between the stone and the pizza. Build the pizza on the parchment paper and then use a thin cutting board to slide it onto the stone. Oh, so that’s why they have those huge paddles in pizzerias! And yes, I have tried to lift up the paper with the pizza on it and no support underneath it to transfer to the stone, and guess what, the pizza is too heavy and the paper rips and now there’s pizza sauce and toppings all over your oven door.
The best part about pizza parties is how interactive it is — people really get into making their own pizzas. Your kitchen will get trashed. The counter will be a wreck of pizza toppings, booze, glasses, and people. Be sure to keep a little staging area with a cutting board so you can transfer the pizza from the oven and cut it and keep it moving. Someone has to police the oven and make sure the pizzas are cycling in and out, aren’t burning, and are getting sliced and distributed. Hostess’s Helper! Usually an overeager guest takes on that role. When you’re not supervising the pizza-making, you, hostess, are hostessing about, making sure everyone is fed, dranked, and conversated.
Do you have any gluten-free friends? Of course you do. They can enjoy pizza, too, if you make them a polenta crust! (I like polenta pizza because it’s gluten-free and delicious, and typical gluten-free crusts always turn out puffy and weird.) Mix up a batch of polenta (1 part corn meal into 2 parts boiling water, add salt, olive oil, stir until it’s smooth with no lumps, there, you’re done) and pour it into a pie dish. Flatten it out with the back of a spoon or spatula. Top with sauce and toppings and bake.
Are you all full and happy now? Have you received enough compliments on your dough and sauce? It’s time for the party to be over. Bust out the foil for leftovers, sweep your counter into the compost/trash, wipe down the flour, and head to bed. The dishes can wait for morning.
Previously: The Garden Soiree.
Katie Walsh used to live in Brooklyn. Now she lives in St. Croix where she throws and goes to a fair amount of parties.