Cookbook Chronicles: Angry Grandma Pizza

Cookbook Chronicles is an on-going series at The Bookery. Over the course of the next year, we’re exploring Deb Perelman’s 2022 cookbook Smitten Kitchen Keepers, cooking one recipe a month and sharing our thoughts. 

I finally made it to the entree section of Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen Keepers, and you know pizza was first on my list of recipes to try. Let’s just put it this way: I really love pizza. Deep dish, thin crust, homemade—I like it all! So when I saw a recipe for “Angry Grandma Pizza,” I knew I had to try it.  

The recipe: Angry Grandma Pizza, p. 171

The cookbook: Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman

The details: The Angry Grandma Pizza is full of delicious things: pepperoni, onion, black olives and artichoke hearts, to name a few. As a side note, in college, one of my favorite places to eat near campus was Shakespeare’s Pizza, where I learned the philosophy I still live by: the more you add to a pizza, the better it gets. Especially when that “more,” involves artichoke hearts.

Back to the recipe at hand. Perelman includes a quick and somewhat simple recipe for the pizza crust. Whenever I use yeast, I have this fear that it’s just not going to rise, but it did, and I really enjoyed this simple crust. It’s delicious, but doesn’t take the focus away from the toppings. And, the recipe actually makes enough dough to make two 9x13 inch pizzas. I was only making one, so I packaged my leftover dough for the freezer, so I can thaw it and make pizza again soon. I’ll let you know if that works out! 

Once you’ve made the dough, the hard part is kind of over. You just have to put on the toppings, sauce and cheese and bake! 

The adjustments: For once, I actually had ALL of the ingredients for a recipe, including the calabrian peppers! The recipe calls for a few of these spicy peppers to be scattered across the two pizzas, but I went a little light on mine, knowing I don’t really love overly spicy pizzas. The recipe also calls for a thinly sliced fennel bulb (maybe you can get that at a Kroger here in the South, but I’ll admit I didn’t have time to suss that out this week) or artichoke hearts, so I wholeheartedly embraced the artichokes. I used Rao’s pizza sauce (big fan of Rao’s jarred tomato sauces), sliced black olives, red onion and red pepper flakes. 

Also, I do recommend reading the entire recipe, not just quickly skimming it, before you get started. Apparently, a “Grandma” pizza means that dollop on the sauce last, after you’ve placed all your toppings, which I decidedly did not do because of my whole “It’s a pizza! I know how to assemble a pizza!” attitude. Deb, I promise, next time, I’ll do it right! 

The verdict: Let’s just say that I’m counting down the days until I can rescue that other ball of dough from the freezer and make this one again! It was delicious, pretty easy and the perfect weekend treat! 

Up Next: Big Crumb Pie Bars

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