God’s Own Pizza

I am back from the pizza experiment!

I would say it was a success, but that would be like saying Barack Obama is conceited and incompetent. It’s an understatement, by several orders of magnitude.

It turns out a commercial convection oven will make outstanding Sicilian pizza. I think it’s better than a home oven. You have to shorten the cooking time, but other than that, it’s swell. And it has about eight racks, so I could conceivably bake eight pizzas at once; two per rack, with stones on the racks between them.

As for flat pizza, I don’t recommend a convection oven. The crust was like Papa John’s, so by my standards, it was FAIL. Everyone who tried it thought it was great, but why not have the best?

When people sampled the pies, there was all sorts of moaning. I have to admit, that was fun. I have no other means of making women make those sounds.

I know all you atheists think I’m ignorant and superstitious. I would never dream of contradicting you. I will just point out that the amazing “coincidences” continued to mount today.

While I was waiting for dough to rise, I met an older gentleman in the church’s workshop, which is…RIGHT BEHIND THE KITCHEN. The walk-in boxes are actually in the workshop. He turned out the be the pastor’s uncle. Guess what he does? WOODWORKING. He showed me a bunch of beautiful cabinets he had made. We talked table saws. Then he said he used to teach ELECTRONICS, which is another thing I love to fool with. And he used to have an RV with a CUMMINS DIESEL, so we got to talk about my recenty acquired truck! Let’s see. They’re letting me cook. I made a friend who turned out to be a jazz fan and horn player. And now I have a friend who loves tools!

But it’s all superstition, right? Nothing to see here. Move along.

One of the church’s volunteers is an appliance repairman who COINCIDENTALLY happens to maintain ovens for a bunch of the local pizzerias. No, nothing out of the ordinary there. Happenstance! He was working on the conventional and convection ovens I was going to be using. He heard me say I was worried about the ovens only going to 500°, and that I really wanted 550°.

Long story short: the convection oven worked beautifully at 500°, but the thermostat on the other oven was bad. He left and got a new one and put it in. He showed it to me. It was a 550° thermostat! He had heard me talking, so he replaced the old busted thermostat with a hotter one! Now I have a convection oven and a conventional oven, to do everything I want!

All luck. I assure you.

They gave me a little space where I could work. It was a refrigerated cabinet with a granite counter. They picked it up used. It’s a PIZZA PREP TABLE. Three feet from the ovens I’ll be using. Ten feet from the corner, around which are the woodworking tools.

The sub-pastor I’m working with–Pastor Marcus–told me I could put my own lock on the cabinet and put my supplies in it! It’s empty!

“So what?”, I hear determined atheists saying. Right, it’s all imaginary.

BUT…I’m also part of the armorbearers group, which means I help with church security. One of our big problems is that we need to have water available, because we walk around all day and get dehydrated. The church wasn’t providing a solution. This was especially important to me, because I had a kidney stone a while back.

Okay, GUESS WHERE I’M GOING TO KEEP MY WATER NOW? In my locked pizza cabinet! I won’t have to worry about people grabbing it! I can make room for water for the other guys, too.

Man, it’s amazing how much divine action you can perceive, when you’re a primitive theist determined to see the hand of God in everything that happens. In order to be an atheist, I’d have to be as hard-headed as the Black Knight.

John, the guy who leads the armorbearers came in to try the pizza. He said it was “anointed.” I told Pastor Marcus I’d have to ask John if I could take time off from the armorbearers to work on Sunday. He yelled across the room at John, who wasn’t fully able to respond because he still had his mouth full. The message: “Just take him.” He packed up the rest of the third pie and took it home.

This is just crazy. The best pizza in Miami will now be available only at Trinity Church.

I still have stuff to do. I have to pick up some stones for their ovens. Maybe a dough hook for their mixer. I’d like to see them spring for a Kitchenaid food processor. I think I would enjoy seeing one of those arrive more than Moses liked watching the Egyptians drown. Three hundred bucks…it’s doable.

Here’s a tip: I used Glad disposable food containers to hold the rising dough today, and guess what? They’re ideal. The dough just won’t stick to them. Hey, what wonderful LUCK.

I’m sure glad I’m not smart enough to be an atheist. Look all the blessings I wouldn’t be imagining.