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Yesterday’s cooking event, happily, was making something new (although I think I’m inoculated against all kinds of food-borne bacteria after surviving my leftover leftovers), namely cheese pizza. “Homemade pizza,” per my nephew’s request.

Yes, 2008 is year two of the great cook-with-the-kid-kin experiment in gift-giving. And this year, my nephew requested homemade pizza. I don’t know what it is with this kid and bread. You would have thought after all the waiting involved in making rolls he would have come up with something different.

Anyway, with our time a little more constrained this year, I went in search of a pizza recipe that didn’t require too long a rise. Most seemed to require at least two hours, and although I do have one recipe calling for only 30 minutes, I haven’t liked the results.

I was pleased, therefore, to find a recipe in my Gourmet Cookbook that called for 1 1/4 hours rise time. I figured by using quick-rise yeast, we could beat our deadline and, perhaps, his 6-year-old patience. Now, I suspect he would have been just as happy with a prefab pizza crust, but my sister didn’t think that would satisfy his homemade requirements. Although I suspect she likes to see me work at this gift, I took her at her word.

So we made the dough (recipe follows), and while it was rising, we got the cheese ready. Here’s where a little serendipity helped my cause. I had decided to get the supplies at the Casbah Market. They had goat-cheese mozzarella or organic (cow) string-cheese mozzarella. Goat-cheese mozzarella tastes goaty, and although the kind clerk noted that I probably could have gotten a block of cow mozzarella next door at Round Corner Cheese Shop, I went ahead and got the string cheese.

String cheese, conveniently, is much more fun, not to mention easier, for a 6-year-old to shred than a block of cheese. No knuckle-scraping graters needed, just pull the stuff apart with fingers. We used the whole 6-ounce pack.

After making our pizza round, we spread it with Muir Glen pizza sauce (another high point for the nephew, using a silicone basting brush for the sauce application), scattered the cheese and baked. I pulled the pizza from the oven with him peering over my shoulder (even I am not going to try to combine a 6-year-old and a 525-degree oven), let it rest for a couple of minutes, and cut.

I must say, it was the best pizza crust I’ve ever made, crispy but not hard on the bottom, tender on the top, medium thickness. But here was the payoff. I asked him how they usually do pizza at his house. “We order it,” he said, “but this is better.” Score!

Here’s the recipe, somewhat adapted.

Pizza

• 1 envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
• 1 3/4 cups, approximately, unbleached all-purpose flour, divided
• 3/4 cup warm water (105-115 degrees F), divided
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon corn meal
• Pizza toppings of your choice

1. Stir together yeast, 1 tablespoon of the flour and 1/4 cup of the water in a measuring cup, and let stand until surface appears creamy, about 5 minutes.
2. In a bowl, blend 1 1/4 cups flour and the salt. Add yeast mixture, oil and remaining 1/2 cup warm water. Stir until smooth.
3. Stir in more flour as needed, about 1/4 cup at a time, until dough comes away from sides of the bowl.
4. Knead dough on lightly floured surface with floured hands until smooth, soft and elastic, about 8 minutes.
5. Form into ball. Place in oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/4 hours. (If you use quick-rise yeast, reduce rise time to 50 minutes or so.) While dough is rising, preheat oven and baking stone to 525 degrees F. Best if stone has an hour or more to heat up.
6. Do not punch dough down. Dust it and hands with flour and set dough on dry work surface. Lift dough by one edge, and let gravity stretch it. Rotate the dough with your two hands, as though turning a steering wheel, to keep dough stretching and moving. When dough is 10 or so inches in diameter, lay it on work surface, and stretch to its 14-inch diameter. (Ours was a little thick in the middle, and I used a little drape-it-over-the-wrist technique to help.)
7. Sprinkle corn meal on baker’s peel. Place dough on peel, and give it a jerk to make sure dough slides easily. If it doesn’t remove dough and add a little more corn meal.
8. Add toppings as desired.
9. Line up peel on far edge of stone. Tilt peel slightly and jerk gently to start pizza sliding. When dough hits stone, quickly pull away the peel and leave pizza fully on the stone.
10. Bake until dough is lightly browned, then remove from oven with peel. Let rest a couple of minutes, then cut and serve.

Makes 1 14-inch pizza.

Note: We did a simple cheese pizza: sauce plus 6 ounces mozzarella. Based on a look at other recipes in the book, baking times might be longer with more toppings.