Thursday: Two-Minute Pizza Prep, Co-op Decompression & The Easiest Pizza Night

The very first thing I did when I came downstairs this morning was deal with my focaccia pizza dough.

And I had purposely made it almost impossible for Morning Me to forget.

Last night, I put my extra-deep half-sheet pan right in the middle of the counter. I lined it with parchment paper, and then I literally put the bottle of olive oil in the middle of the pan.

So when I walked into the kitchen this morning:

Oh yeah. The dough.

Sometimes meal prep is just leaving yourself extremely obvious clues.

Less Than Two Minutes of Work

The focaccia dough had been sitting in the refrigerator overnight, and transferring it to the pan took me less than two minutes.

I added plenty of olive oil to the parchment-lined pan, pulled the dough out a little, flipped it over in all that oil, put the lid on and left it alone.

That’s it.

And then it sat on my counter for the next 10 hours.

Am I pushing the limits with this experiment?

Yes.

Did it probably overproof a little?

Also yes…here’s what it looked like at 5 p.m….

Did anyone care when we were eating focaccia pizza for dinner?

Absolutely not.

This is what I’ve been experimenting with because I want to know how flexible this recipe can actually be. It’s one thing to tell someone focaccia pizza is easy. It’s another thing to figure out whether you can spend two minutes on it before leaving for work or co-op, ignore it for the entire day and still have pizza that night.

Apparently you can.

Breakfast and Out the Door

Then it was time to actually get everyone fed.

We had a little bit of everything this morning: bacon, toast, cereal, fruit, chicken sausage and oatmeal.

Whatever gets everybody fed and out the door.

Then we headed to co-op.

Everyone had the PlanetBox lunches I packed yesterday, and they worked perfectly. I packed lots of soft food and diced stuff for my kiddo who just had the expander installed….definitely not our normal food, but he was excited to eat it and I’m leaning into the foods he wants to try and chew!

One of my friends was actually telling me today how much she likes them, and I completely agree. They’re definitely an investment upfront, but once you own them, you own them.

I’ve been using ours for years.

They’re stainless steel, nothing really sticks to them, and I usually just wash them quickly in the sink.

The 30-Minute Rule

When we finally got home from co-op, we did what is quickly becoming our standard Thursday routine.

Everyone washes their hands.

Then I set a timer for 30 minutes.

Go watch TV. Play Nintendo. Find a corner of the house. Do whatever you want.

Let’s just all not talk to each other for half an hour.

After a full day of co-op plus the drive home, everybody needs to decompress.

Including me.

Especially me.

My Post-Co-op Snack

And I was HUNGRY.

I had some deli turkey from Costco, so I made little turkey roll-ups with lettuce, pickle and mustard.

Then I found one of the last burger patties from Sunday night and heated that up with some leftover roasted vegetables from the refrigerator.

Turkey roll-ups, burger, vegetables.

Solid snack.

This is also why I like having random pieces of cooked protein hanging around. I don’t need to make an official meal every time I’m hungry. I can open the refrigerator and assemble something substantial in five minutes. Daphne also needed a little snack to make it till dinner…she LOVES a sandwich (but only somehow eats the stuff inside the bread…but doesn’t actually eat the bread!)

The Easiest Thursday Pizza Night

Around 5:00, I cranked the oven up to 475°F. I also tried to film this as a long form video for YouTube…we’ll see if it works!

By this point, my focaccia dough had been sitting there all day looking very large and bubbly.

I dimpled the dough, added the toppings and put it into the oven.

Then I made some side salads while it baked.

Dinner.

Done.

And this is exactly why I love this particular pizza for a night like tonight.

I love a fun homemade pizza night. Get out the pizza stone. Get out the pizza peel. Dust everything with flour and cornmeal. Shape individual pizzas. Slide them into the oven.

It’s fun.

Thursday night after homeschool co-op is not the night for that.

I want the dinner that leaves me with almost nothing to clean.

With the focaccia pizza, everything is contained in that one parchment-lined half-sheet pan. When dinner is over, I peel off the parchment and put the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher.

If someone could please start manufacturing parchment paper about four inches wider, I’m not even sure I’d need to wash the pan.

I still would.

But you get my point.

Why I Keep Coming Back to This Recipe

This little experiment also reminded me why I want to make the longer YouTube video for this recipe.

The magic isn’t just that the pizza tastes good.

It’s that the recipe can fit into tiny pockets of time.

Last night, I mixed the dough.

This morning, I spent less than two minutes getting it onto the pan.

Then I left my house and ignored it for about 10 hours.

At 5:00, I dimpled it, topped it and baked it.

There was no big pizza-making project at the end of an already long day.

Maybe today’s dough was technically a little overproofed.

But sometimes there’s the technically perfect way to make something, and then there’s the way that actually works in your life.

Tonight, the way that worked in my life made a very good pizza.

And now we have plenty of focaccia pizza left for Friday.

I’ve also still got a decent amount of grilled chicken in the refrigerator, plus the sausages I haven’t cooked yet.

So tomorrow’s food is already looking pretty easy.