I have never been a great cook. Or even a good one for that matter. After trawling through two dozen different pizza dough recipes, I settled on the following:
800g golden flour, plus another handful for dusting the surface.
2tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
200g butter
With grated cheddar and jarred tomato sauce for the top. This was not going to be tasty food, but a pizza shaped experiment.
After thirty five minutes of frustrated mixing I created a lump of dough the size of child’s football. I tugged out a lock, and it was like pulling on a huge masticated piece of chewing gum. A long thin strand soon ran from the table to the front door of my kitchen.
It was beyond tempting to try and stretch my creation down the street, and see how far the doughy rope reached before the dough snapped off. But I focused on my aim, and spread out a cartwheel sized pizza base on my tabletop. I spread the tomato sauce, hand shaking slightly.
Within five minutes all I had was a rubbery manhole, smothered in tomato red slop.
I couldn’t be bothered to clean up this mess, and went for a long shower. The dough from my fingers floated in wiry tendrils around the plughole. In bed I thought about all the luxuries possible with that money, instead of a bag of twenty year old flour. I went to bed, and dreamt of frozen worlds.
The icicle formed overnight.