I never felt like a good anorexic.
I don't mean to say that I wish I were better. I don’t, not now. I write that now and feel the sting of embarrassment that I ever felt like I wanted to be better at destroying my body. But there was a time in my life when I so desperately wanted to be better at restricting myself from food that I wished I hadn't grown up in a home that nurtured a voracious appetite.
My parents often described our family as the type that talked about dinner while we were eating lunch. Each meal was a priority because they helped guide us through the redundancy of our days. Having to read Shakespeare or practice geometry sucked less when we came home from school to chicken a la king simmering on the stove, biscuits caramelizing in the oven waiting to be smothered. When the energy of the house lulled in the long winter months, a trip to Applebees rejuvenated us, in no small part to cheese sticks opening up our taste buds for our meal.
The snacks in between meals were just as essential. Our counter often sat cluttered with a Tupperware filled with chocolate chip cookies and a milky white cake holder concealing a half eaten chocolate bundt or sock-it-to-me cake. We shared bites of these sweets to celebrate victories in our basketball games or to soothe the ache of our defeats. Just as often we ate them for no reason at all except we loved the way the warm cinnamon streusel melted into tender pound cake.
When eventually I realized that I could do things to make my body smaller, I started to curse my upbringing, my hunger. I’d read and read and read advice on how best to lose weight, and the answer was always simply, stop eating. Getting the body I thought would fit better into the world meant abandoning a part of me that felt genetic: my love for and adoration of food. What was genius—I thought, subconsciously at the time—would be to love food in a new and different way. I didn’t have to eat it. I could make it.
The relationship between my eating disorder and my career was a love story for the ages. Little did I know going into my career in food that the culture was one of perfectionism and relentless discipline, traits that would come to enhance my ability to restrict my food. I could be the perfect chef and the perfect anorexic by practicing and enhancing my endurance with discipline. I could escape perfectionism, so I had to succumb to it.
I also still had almost 18 solid years in my house, with my family and my food. To spend my days making dense buttermilk chocolate cakes, so moist the crumbs stick to your fingertips like velcro, and not taking a bite felt simultaneously like a success and a failure. Sending a speed rack full of golden butter croissants from the kitchen to the front counter to be sold without snatching one while it was still warm and soft in the middle felt like I might as well change my name. I didn’t recognize this person, and yet it was the woman I was also so desperate to be.
So it comes as no surprise to me now that occasionally, I did let her—the one who revels in rich chocolate and warm butter—slip out sometimes. I was often alone in the early morning hours at the bakeries where I worked. I was baking off croissants and cookies and brioche buns and danishes and tarts, all in preparation for a busy day of service. There were inevitably always a few ugly ducklings—croissants that weren’t folded properly or cookies where the sugar clumped and baked into a weird lacy edge—and sometimes, I’d have a bite. Sometimes two. Immediately afterward, I’d fall into a funnel cloud of shame, and the next few days would be hell in my brain, but for those few brief moments, I’d feel free.
One of my favorite bites to sneak, one that I can still feel in my mouth, is focaccia. I worked for a French chef, and from the first moment I tried his focaccia, I had two thoughts: this is delicious, and this is not really focaccia. His rectangular loaf was fluffier than focaccia, pillowy where focaccia was meant to be chewy. The crust’s crisp was less harsh than other focaccias I’d had, and the top was smothered with so many toppings, more like a pizza. He’d put tomatoes and olives and basil or for his French version, a dijon sauce and caramelized onions and lardons.
I loved them all just the same. I reworked his recipe over the years to make it a little more focaccia-like—more oil, more mixing—but I keep using all-purpose flour because I just can’t bring myself to buy bread flour for my tiny kitchen. And it makes the texture slightly less chewy, which I actually don’t mind. I also finally just wanted to actually turn it into pizza, so that’s what we have here.
I hope you try this focaccia pizza, and I hope you eat as much as your body yearns for. I hope you eat it for the burnt-ish cheesy edges. I hope you top it with whatever the hell you want, like chef always did. I hope you let the crust challenge your mouth with its crispness roughing up the roof of your mouth, and I hope you love it as much as I do so you continue to come back for more.
Focaccia Pizza
Makes a 9"x15" pan pizza
For the dough:
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup olive oil
For the sauce:
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced or grated
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes
For the toppings
1 pound shredded cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, provolone, whatever you like)
Soppressata (or pepperoni or canadian bacon or no meat at all!)
Honey Sauce (optional)
¼ cup honey
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Make the dough:
In a pitcher, measure out 1 ¾ cup warm water. Not hot. It shouldn’t hurt to put your finger in the water, it should feel cozy. Stir in the honey & then the yeast. Allow to sit for 5-10 minutes. You should see bubbles forming at the top, maybe even some foaminess. If you don’t see any movement after 10 minutes, don’t worry! The yeast usually comes in packets of three—try again with new warm water!
In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer with a dough hook, first put the salt, then all-purpose flour. Stir in your yeasty water until a shaggy dough forms. Add the oil and stir some more. If you’re using a mixer, set the speed to medium and let this thing go until it’s no longer leaving much residue on the sides of the bowl. If you’re using your hands, like me, I suggest grabbing a bench scraper—and if you don’t have a bench scraper but you like to bake, this is your sign to get one. This dough is sticky icky, so using a bench scraper helps the kneading process. Try not to use much flour and knead the dough for about ten minutes. Fold it into itself, use the bench scraper to scrape it off the counter top and throw it back down, really get rough with it. As you continue to mix, you’ll notice the dough gets slightly easier to work with and sticks a little less to the counter and your hands. It’s still wet, but has a little more body to it now. If you used a mixer, take the dough out of the bowl. Now everyone, spray that bowl well, and put the dough back in, cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rise for about two hours or until it’s about two and half times bigger.
Make the sauce:
While your dough rises, this is a good time to make your pizza sauce. Open your can of whole tomatoes and use your hands (if you don’t mind a more textured sauce) or an immersion blender to break down the whole tomatoes. I like a smooth sauce, but again, find a texture you like. And if this sounds annoying to you, just buy pureed tomatoes, it’ll be fine.
In a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat, combine about a tablespoon of butter and a teaspoon of oil and cook the garlic briefly, until it’s very fragrant. Add the tomatoes and all the juices, the salt, sugar, and red pepper flakes and let simmer for about a half hour. Remove from the heat, taste for seasonings and adjust, and set aside.
Make the pizza:
Oil your sheet pan with a nice thin layer of olive oil. Without punching or slapping or doing anything aggressive to your dough, dump it into your sheet pan. Start to gently pull and stretch and press the dough to fit the pan. You want it to stretch into each corner. Now, lightly spray some plastic wrap and cover the top. Let it rise for about an hour or two until it doubles.
Set your oven to 425.
While your oven warms, prepare your toppings! Grate your cheese if it isn’t already, slice any veggies you’re adding. If you’re making the honey sauce, warm the honey and pepper flakes until they boil. Turn off the heat and stir in the vinegar. Set aside.
Now cook your focaccia without toppings for fifteen minutes. It shouldn’t get too much color, but it will mostly bake through on the inside. This is perfect. Once removed from the oven, increase the oven temperature to 500 or however hot it gets.
Cool the plain focaccia slightly, maybe ten minutes while the oven heats up and top away! Sauce, cheese, meats, veggies—throw it on there. Save the honey sauce for after. Bake again for another 5-10 minutes, depending on how hot your oven gets. You want the cheese to caramelize and get burnt-ish on the outside.
Top with honey sauce and let cool for at least five minutes before slicing. If you’re like me, finish off your slice with a fistful of arugula.
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