Pizza

Now that I've made Pizza #1, the sky is the limit. We are having pizza on every trip, starting now.

Flavor: 9/10 (I think plain sauce will be tastier than meat sauce)

Ease at home: 6/10

Ease at camp: 3/10
Heat level: 0/10 (to taste)

Times made: 1

Resentfully dragging my legs like a bored child in a department store, angry with the altitude as though it oppressed me intentionally, I pulled the "birthday" entitlement card and coerced Dennis into a zero (well, almost zero) day. "This is my birthday trip, therefore we skip Sixty Lakes Basin."


Serendipitously, our zero day granted a cherished opportunity to make friends with a lone woman hiking the JMT, on her twentieth and final day before hiking out at Onion Valley. Her name is Sonya. She is a beautiful, strong and inspiring woman, a computer engineer and an established backpacker, the kind of woman I hope to be in 20 years. I'm shy with strangers, but especially with her.

We talk about food. She's a dedicated ultra-lighter who cut her sleeping pad in half to reduce base weight. She's dwarfed by an oversized (but lightweight) FroggTogg jacket, protecting her from the sun. Sonya explains her cooking setup: a tablet-powered, caldera-cone amplified, Foster's can arrangement, which weighs less than a pound, but really limits her creativity. As we relax and enjoy the view, she retreats momentarily to heat lunch: a freezer bag meal of what looks like plain orzo and beans. She's ecstatic to supplement her meal with the curry and lime fried trout Dennis caught.

As I talk about our dinner plans, she perks up. Pizza with veggie meat sauce. Her dinner plan is plain angel hair pasta. I tell her how I plan to make the pizza: a simple yeast dough, cooked in a pan, covered in reheated sauce and crumbled parmesan. I'm nervous because I intended to cook the pizza in a Fry-Bake, but wasn't able to find one before we left. What if the bottom scorches in our MSR pan? What if I can't calibrate to a sufficiently low burn? How will I melt the cheese?

"I haven't had bread in twenty days," she says. I feel comforted. I'm reminded that out here, we're all ravenous, and a bag filled with brown goo labeled "Beef Bourguignone" is devoured in 5 minutes by a grateful hiker singing its praises.

As the sun falls, I nurse the yeast by slipping the dough bag under my shirt, on my warm belly. The dough rises peacefully and I observe its progress by watching my shirt buttons grow tighter. Dennis flips his Tenkara rod back and forth, his puppetry conjuring little purple flies darting convincingly above the still alpine water. I set my book down for a moment, touch my belly and feel silly: protective and motherly toward the dough.

When the bag has doubled in size, I heat the pan with more oil than I could ever justify at home. The dough sizzles and cracks loudly, filling the silence of the lake. I carefully shift the focus of the flame and height of the pan to distribute heat evenly. Meanwhile, the sauce rehydrates with boiled water in a cozy. My heart lifts to the skies as I flip the dough and peel off a piece to check inside. It's cooking through! It's not burning! I feel responsible for making Sonya's last night on the JMT a memorable one and I am relieved to see hot, fluffy success on the horizon.

Lush with sumptuous meat sauce and tangy cheese, my beautiful pizza is torn into irregular, triangle-like pieces with a titanium spork. During the first slice, Sonya's face is cathartic, peaceful, joyous. She ignores her angel hair pasta and asks, so sweetly, for a second slice. I am happy to oblige. What a wonderful dinner this was.

Recipe:

Dough- combine in a baggie:

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup bread flour
• 1/2 packet RapidRise yeast (regular yeast OK too- but may take too long unless it's a short/zero day)
• 1 t salt
• 1 t sugar

Sauce:

• Dehydrate your favorite pizza sauce. Before bagging the dehydrated sauce, break it up into easy-to-rehydrate bits by running through a food processor for 20-30 seconds. For meat sauce, cook sauce with meat first (we used Beyond Meat frozen ground fake meat which takes extra time to rehydrate, but is great.)

Cheese:

• Parmesan is fail-safe for distance hiking because it doesn't deteriorate even in hot weather. However, it doesn't melt much, which is a bummer. We had a chunk of cheddar that lasted the entire trip, so I'm going to try bringing smoked mozzarella next time- I think it will hold up. We'll just plan on having the pizza no later than day 4. 

At camp:

1-2 hours before eating (longer if weather is cooler), prepare dough:

1. add 1 T. oil to bag and enough filtered water to make a good, somewhat loose dough. Somewhere between very soft and soft on this consistency reference guide. Knead dough in bag until it comes together to form a cohesive dough, about 5 minutes. If it's cool out, consider putting the dough bag against your body for heat to assist the rise. I read a book while my dough bag rose on my belly.

When the dough has doubled in size, you are ready to prepare the pizza:

1. Make the sauce. Boil water, add sauce, set aside in a cozy to rehydrate.
2. Crumble/grate/chop your cheese.
3. Generously coat the bottom of your fry pan with oil. You basically want to fry the bottom of this pie. Spread dough out to the edges of your oily pan, then place over medium to medium-low heat. You'll need to baby the process: move the pan around, peek underneath the dough, to make sure it's not burning. The dough will cook for around 10 minutes until the insides are mostly cooked through, bottom is golden brown, and the pie is ready to flip.
4. Flip the pie. Do the same thing- babying it, but only for about 5 minutes this side. 
5. Flip the pie back over, so that the flat side is on the bottom. Pour on your steamy pizza sauce, followed by the cheese. If you have a lid, put the lid on and remove from heat for 5 minutes while the cheese melts.
6. Enjoy!

Rae Lake in the morning.