Wood-Fired Pizza Night at Home

It was one of those early spring days in Montana where 50 degrees feels like a gift: sunny, a little breezy, the kind of day that makes you want to do something outside even if outside still requires a jacket. Chad asked that morning, the way he always does, what’s for dinner. I already knew. Wood-fired pizza. We were firing up the Solo Stove pizza oven.

Our youngest son was out with a friend, so it was just the two of us, and there’s something about a quiet house on a beautiful day that makes you want to cook something really good. Not complicated. Just delicious.

Around 3:30 I started the dough and set it aside to rise. While it was doing its thing, I made the sauce. I opened a can of Giadzy tomatoes and poured myself a glass of Prosecco, because sauce-making is more fun with a glass of Prosecco.

I’ve been cooking with Giada De Laurentiis’s Giadzy line of Italian products since I discovered them a year or so ago, and her Pomodorino di Corbara tomatoes are one of the ingredients I keep coming back to. Small, sweet and intensely flavored, they’re unbeatable for a no-cook pizza sauce.

Once the sauce was done, I still had a little time to wait on the dough. That’s the thing about pizza night: it has a rhythm to it. You can’t rush it, and after a while you stop wanting to.

When the dough was ready, I called Chad in to start the fire. That’s how we do it. I handle the kitchen side, he manages the flame. While the oven heated up, I stretched the dough by hand and built the pizzas on the peel.

A note for next time: drain a little liquid from the can before you crush the tomatoes. My sauce was wetter than I wanted, and I could see it as soon as I spread it on the dough. I put them in anyway, and it cooked down beautifully. Those high temperatures take care of things a regular oven can’t, and what came out tasted fresh and special in a way that’s hard to explain. The kind of thing that makes you wonder why you ever order delivery.

Chad pulled them when the cheese was bubbling and the edges had that perfect char. We finished them with fresh basil and brought everything to the counter. Not the table. The counter, where it’s informal and close and dinner becomes part of the conversation.

We poured two glasses of Coppola red. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s wine, and yes, part of the reason I reach for that bottle is that I’ve been a fan of The Godfather my entire life. It’s not the most expensive bottle in our wine fridge, but it’s the one I keep coming back to, and that night it was exactly right.

Some Friday nights are planned down to the last detail. This one wasn’t. Just a beautiful Montana day, the two of us, a fire in the backyard and a sauce that came together in about five minutes.