Paul’s Pizza And the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre

American Entree

PAUL’S PIZZA

INGREDIENTS – PIZZA CRUST

2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup beer
⅔ cup water
2⅔ tablespoons vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
2½ teaspoons active dry yeast

no-stick spray

INGREDIENTS- TOPPINGS*

10 mozzarella sticks
6 tablespoons pasta sauce
12 ounces ground pork sausage
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1½ cups grated mozzarella cheese

* = All of these toppings are divided equally between 2 pie tins.

SPECIAL UTENSILS

bread maker
2 8″-pie tins

Makes 2 8″ pies. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION – PIZZA CRUST

Add flour, beer, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. “Ask not what your yeast can do for you. Ask what you can do for your yeast.” Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait for the required time, about an hour. In the meantime preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pie tins with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pie tins.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and divide it into two lumps. Roll out one lump until its dough cover will cover the bottom and sides of the pie tin and still have 1″ of dough hanging over the edge of the pie tin. If you do not have a rolling pin, any canned food can will do as long as it is at least six inches tall. It is best to use no-stick spray on pie tin or coat it with a thin layer of flour before spreading the dough. Repeat for second dough lump. When 30 minutes are left on the bread maker, preheat oven to 400 degrees.

PREPARATION – TOPPINGS

Place 5 mozzarella sticks end-to-end and as close to the edge of the pie tin as possible. Fold the dough that’s hanging beyond the edge of the tin over the mozzarella sticks. The mozzarella sticks should be completely enclosed by dough.

Add 3 tablespoons pasta sauce to the pie tin. Spread with spatula. Flatten 6 ounces ground pork sausage until it is wide enough to cover the pasta sauce. Cover pasta sauce with ground pork sausage. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon minced garlic over pork sausage. Spread ¾ cup mozzarella cheese over ground pork sausage and minced garlic. Repeat for second pie tin.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until cheese starts to brown.

TIDBITS

1) The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibited the sale of alcohol. Beer has alcohol. Thus, the sale of beer was prohibited.

2) It didn’t take long for beer drinkers to realize if beer couldn’t be sold, it couldn’t be bought.

3) But what about if beer were combined with other legal things. Like anesthesia? Soon surgeries all over the nation were adding beer mist to the ether they administered to patients. Beer mist made drifting off into unconsciousness easier, pleasurable in fact.

4) So much so, that people in all the big cities, Chicago, in particular, took to shooting each other, so they could go to hospitals for their beer misted anesthesia. Aren’t you impressed I spelled unconsciousness and anesthesia correctly and on the first try?

5) Municipal governments started to look askance at all this violence.

6) Then in 1920, Bee R. Barley told her friend Al Capone, “Why don’t you sell beer illegally?” And her idea was good. With the Chicago police busy investigating emergency rooms, Al was free to open one speakeasy after another. Beer sales boomed. Al went big time into selling beer. So did other hoodlums. Everyone wanted a piece of the lucrative illegal beer trade.

7) Competition for the beer trade became fierce. Things were said. Bullets were fired. Soon gang wars raged all across Chicago. For a while, the underworld told city officials that all the shootings arose from people really, really wanting beer anesthesia. Then the Saint. Valentine’s Day massacre happened. Seven murdered men. Dead men want no beer anesthesia. The gig was up. Eliott Ness and his Untouchables closed all the breweries. Cleaned up the surgeries as well.

8) But people still needed their beer. And so pizzas with beer crusts came about. Peace broke out in Chicago. Fragile yes, but enough to keep the city going until Prohibition ended in 1933. I offer up this recipe in the cause of worldwide peace. Can a Nobel Prize be far behind?

Chef Paul

 

Check out my latest novel, the hilarious apocalyptic thriller, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms? It’s published by HumorOutcasts and is available in paperback or Kindle on amazon.com