It’s a Frigidaire Miracle

I baked a pizza – from scratch (I know! Who am I??) – and I really did my best to screw it up. Unintentionally, of course, but you know. That’s how I roll.

I decided to bake pizza because I wanted to try out the super-cool pizza button, which automatically turns on the convection feature. I wasn’t even sure what “convection” even meant, so I googled it, of course.

Convection ovens or fan ovens or turbo ovens augment a traditional oven by circulating heated air using a fan. The fan motor is in a separate enclosure, to protect it from overheating and melting any plastic components including wire insulation. Food warms faster in a convection oven, because the moving air strips away the thin layer of air which otherwise would surround and insulate the food. This is the same physical phenomenon which causes wind chill.

Who knew? (Oh, everyone but me.)

Anyway, I started to make the pizza crust. It’s the first thing I’ve ever made that involved yeast. Are you proud? I thought so.

The first problem was that I didn’t have enough flour. Minor detail. Fortunately my sister was on her way to my house anyway, so I called her and had her bring some over. Crisis averted.

Then the kneading fun began. And by fun, I mean misery. It’s times like these (not that I’ve ever kneaded anything before, but you know, if I did, I’m sure I would have felt the same way) that I wish I had a stand mixer. Ten minutes of kneading dough? ZOMG I’ve had 10 minutes pass faster on the treadmill. For realz.

I didn’t know exactly how long to bake the pizza, so – again – I googled it. The first few things I read warned against using a convection oven for pizza, because apparently sometimes the dough doesn’t get done in the middle. That made me a little nervous. I was planning to bake the crust on my Pampered Chef stoneware bar pan, and I meant to heat up as the oven was pre-heating, hoping that a hot pan would make the crust bake faster. Except I forgot to do that.

Problem number two.

My solution was to bake the crust a little before putting on the toppings. Except I forgot to do that, too.

Problem number three.

There was nothing to do but pop my fully-topped pizza (pepperoni, green pepper and onion, in case you were wondering) on its cold stoneware into the oven, and hoped for the best.

It turned out perfectly. The crust was cooked through and was crispy on the bottom, even on the middle pieces.

Problem number four? We ate it before I remembered to take a picture. But trust me, it was beautiful.

So, despite my best efforts to ruin it, the pizza button and the convection oven came through for me.

It was a miracle, I tell you. A Frigidaire miracle.

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In other news, tonight we had my husband’s tennis team over for dinner… 14 hungry boys descended upon my house less than an hour after I got home from work. Thanks to the Fit-More oven, everything was done on time.

I baked four lasagnas, three pans of brownies and two loaves of garlic bread all at the same time.

Wanna see?

My only “teachable moment” from that experience? Don’t put the bread on the bottom rack. Take my word for it.

I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Range/Microwave to facilitate my review.