Chapter 90 – I Want to Eat Pizza (Part 1): Because There’s a Pizza Oven There

I want to eat pizza.

As for the miasma that was mixed into the tonic—I just left it all to Hakase-san while delivering the medicinal herbs for the time being.

Because honestly, I don’t really understand it myself.

Apparently, the tonic is popular in the capital but not widely distributed in this town,

So it’s unlikely to be the sole cause of the illness.

Yeah, I figured it wouldn’t be that easy to cure a disease with an unknown cause…

So anyway—pizza.

Lately, I’ve been so busy growing medicinal herbs that I haven’t had much time to relax.

And it’s precisely at times like this that you need to eat something delicious, right?

There’s a bread oven. And I can borrow it.

how could anyone not want pizza?

Making pizza dough is actually pretty easy.

I remember once, at a friend’s house during a pizza party, their home bakery machine broke and we couldn’t make the dough.

But then, my friend’s older sister said, “I’ll just knead it by hand,”

 and she casually whipped up the pizza dough by hand.

Well, up until then I had thought that you couldn’t make bread dough without a bread maker. I was so entrenched in that belief that it was a shock.

And the pizza made with that handmade dough? It was delicious.

Looking back, it was just a misconception, like thinking you can’t cook rice without a rice cooker.

Of course, you can cook rice in a pot or even a frying pan if you want to.

I realized then just how many misconceptions I probably held like that—That “you can only do something this one specific way.”

Once I started baking bread myself, I naturally learned how to make pizza dough also.

I think a lot of people have repurposed failed bread dough into pizza dough at some point.

There’s just one catch—if you’re baking pizza, you want to bake it at the initial high heat, not in the oven’s residual heat. The optimum temperature for pizza is higher than the temperature for baking hard bread.

“Larry-san, I have a small favor to ask…”

So, I negotiated with Larry in advance to ask if I could borrow the bread oven for a little while just before they start baking their bread.

If the oven’s hot enough, it should take about 90 seconds to bake, so I don’t think it will take that long. Still, I feel a bit guilty since I’ll be asking during the busiest moment.

 “Oh, you’re just baking it, right? That’s no problem at all. Are you coming tomorrow? But wait—you’re flattening risen dough and then baking it?”

He grinned.

Is that some kind of new stuffed bread variation? Sounds interesting. He gave permission right away, and even told me the usual time they start baking.

“Thank you so much!”

“Is this one of your new bread inventions, Saki? I’m looking forward to it!”

Ann said with a smile. “No, I don’t think it’s really a new invention—it’s more like a traditional style of eating pizza.”

Now that it’s come to this, I want to make a truly delicious pizza. I’ll need to shop for ingredients on the way home.

I recently found a store that sells really good cheese, and I thought if I put a lot of their cheese on it, it’d be a winner.

Also, I already bought some delicious bacon. I’ve made bacon before using a DIY cardboard smoker, and I do want to try that here eventually—But let’s be honest, what I can buy here is higher quality than what I could make.

Still… I do want to try smoking nuts and making smoked cheese at some point.

As for the tomato sauce, I’ll go all out and use only cherry tomatoes. . Tomato sauce made with large tomatoes is great too, but when you use cherry tomatoes, the flavor becomes so much richer and sweeter—absolutely incredible.

So, let’s see… the things I need to buy are: Cheese and Olive oil.

I already have onions, garlic, and bell peppers. And of course, I’m growing basil.

Thanks to my past shopping history, I can buy olive oil fairly cheaply.

But if possible, I’d rather get genuine olive oil than risk buying a fake.

In Japan, the standards for labeling something “extra virgin olive oil” differ from other countries, So there’s a lot of questionable stuff on the market.

As I was thinking that…

“Don’t worry, the olive oil we carry here is the real deal.”

Said a shop clerk I’d never seen before—Dressed like an Arab merchant, with squinty-looking eyes. His voice was really smooth, and he spoke with a nostalgic  accent that totally caught me off guard.

“Really? That’s great!”

I almost replied in full-on Kansai dialect. I’m not usually that dialect-heavy, but I guess this was what people meant when they say “you start mimicking the way someone talks.”

This is it. I wonder if there are a lot of counterfeit extra virgin olive oils in this world too…

Well, whatever. If I can get my hands on good olive oil, that’s all that matters.

This is a store I already trust because their cheese is amazing. I’m glad I asked about their olive oil.

“First, let’s make the tomato sauce.”

I announced as I began to prep.

“We’ve got the cherry tomatoes right here!”

A whole basket full of beautiful, freshly picked mini tomatoes. Some red, some orange. Personally, I find the orange ones are sweeter than the red ones—I guess it’s just a difference in the variety.

For the record, I don’t really like tomatoes. But I love pizza. I used to dislike cheese too, but after getting into pizza, I’ve come to enjoy it. As for tomatoes—As long as they’re cooked and don’t have that slimy green part, I can eat them just fine.

“Here are some onions and garlic.”

Mimi, still in her lizard form today, curled herself around the garlic.

Kirara’s even started mimicking my way of speaking.

I finely chopped the onions and garlic. Remove the stems from the cherry tomatoes and cut them in half.

Apparently, people perceive the smell of garlic differently. When I eat garlic, sometimes I feel like I’m eating gunpowder. Not that I’ve ever eaten gunpowder… but still.

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