Laminated pizza dough.

We're big on pizza here. 

Our Christmas Eve tradition is to order the Hometown Hero from Abby's, our favorite pizza place in town. My buddy apparently worked there for a few years when he was growing up and remembers Christmas Eve fondly. 'I always loved working that shift,' he told me while our boys played at the park. Why? 'The tips were really good.' Fair enough. 

Inspired by their pizza, K went sleuthing to see if she could learn any of their secrets. Turns out, they use a laminated crust. Basically, like a cinnamon roll. Minus the cinnamon. Last week, we gave it a try.

Step one: Roll out the dough flat but not necessarily in a circle. Then smear it with a bunch of butter.

Step 2: Roll it up like you're making cinnamon rolls.

Step 3: Flatten that with the rolling pin.

Step 4: Fold that into thirds. Or basically a cube-ish shape because (spoiler) the next step is to form it loosely into a ball.

The last step is to roll it out like normal, in a circle. Well, if a circle pizza is what you're after. We always brush on a coat of olive oil, too.

We also always par bake our crust.

Now I know I mentioned being inspired by Abby's. That was to learn their secrets. That week's pizza night was really inspired by the new Pixar movie, Soul. There's a scene where Joe and 22 are walking down a street in NYC and, to make a point, Joe offers her a slice of pizza. It's likely animated to accurately depict New York Style pizza: a huge, dripping-with-pepperoni-grease slice of pizza. Mmm. So that's what we made. To keep with our inspiration, I only cut it into six monstrous slices.

As it baked, this pizza just smelled different. No doubt it was the butter fat melting and combining with the flour and water of the crust in our five-hundred-degree oven. Delicious. It smelled like a legit pizzeria. The crust (as, umm, shown above) was flaky, tender, and crispy all at the same time. Yeah, thank you K for discovering this little secret for us!