3/28/25

 Most people have had red pizza, or pizza covered with red sauce, but have you ever had white pizza?  White pizza is made in almost the same way as red pizza: the dough rises and is rolled out, toppings are applied, and it is cooked in an oven—but the key difference is that white pizza does not have any tomato sauce on it.  Instead, a white pizza may have olive oil or no sauce at all.  I like white pizza more than red pizza because you can really taste the ingredients.  Adding some fresh tomatoes to a white pizza will give it that tomato flavor without the completely overwhelming taste of the red sauce that covers most pizzas.  If you have not had a white pizza, I recommend that you order or make one today.

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The foundation of every pizza is the crust, and good crust comes from good dough.  You might be surprised to learn that pizza dough is made from nothing more than flour, water, yeast, olive oil, salt, and sometimes sugar.  Start by adding your yeast packet to a cup of warm water.  Let the yeast activate, and then add two cups of flour, two tablespoons of olive oil, two teaspoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt.  Mix all of that together and wait half an hour for the dough to rise.  Now you’re ready to roll it out!

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Cooking the perfect pizza at home can be quite a challenge.  You may find that it’s difficult to get your oven to the right temperature.  If the oven is too hot the crust will burn, become hard, and taste bad.  If your oven isn’t hot enough, the crust may get soggy.  Even at the perfect temperature, extra moisture from your ingredients may prevent the bottom of the crust from fully cooking, but don’t let oven temperature stop you from building the pizza of your dreams.  Get yourself a pizza stone.  A pizza stone will get very hot when preheated and will allow your crust to fully cook without burning it.  Then you can pile the ingredients on your pizza and have a crispy crust that isn’t burned.  That’s the way to go.

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Pizza is often viewed as a junk food, and it is true that some pizzas are high in salt, fat, and calories, but there may also be some benefit to eating pizza.  Some studies have found that lycopene, an antioxidant that exists in tomato products that are often used in pizza, may prevent some forms of cancer.  Dr. Silvano Gallus, of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmaceutical Research in Milan, studied the eating habits of people who developed cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and colon.  He concluded that people who ate pizza at least once a week had significantly less chance of developing these cancers.  Here’s to your health.

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 If you ask me, the perfect pizza has a thin crust, but not too thin.  Even though I’m from Chicago, I prefer the New York style crust.  Your perfect pizza might have tomato sauce on it, but mine has pesto on top of the crust.  On the pesto I’d like to see lots of cheese: a full layer of shredded mozzarella and Romano cheese, and on top of the shredded mozzarella, I’d like to see some slices of fresh mozzarella.  Now you might think I’m crazy for this one, but I’d really like to see some goat cheese in the crust.  To top it all off, I’d like to see it polka-dotted with pepperoni slices.  Now that’s what I call a pizza pie.     

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This is an example of _______________.

• a table of contents page

• an index page

• a glossary

• a title page

Which text feature would you use to find the names of all chapters in a book and the pages where they started?

• a title

• captions

• the table of contents

• the glossary

This is an example of _______________.

• a table of contents page
• an index page
• a glossary
• a title page

The black line is pointing to which text feature?

• caption
• heading
• subheading
• diagram

If a word is in bold, italics, or underlined, it might be _______.

• a less important detail

• spelled correctly

• information you should skip

• a new word to learn