The rise and fall of pizza dough

This was partly M.'s inspiration and partly my failure to find ready-made pizza dough at Whole Foods, as M. suggested. I was in the mood for a pizza with mushrooms and caramelized onions, but the pizzerias in New Rochelle are quite disgusting to say the least. M. made a really beautiful pizza for her parents at her daughter's 4th with WF pizza dough and I thought I'd give it a try, too. But I had no luck in finding it. So I made the dough myself, which turned out to be o.k., but not great. Now I'm racking my brain trying to remember what my all-time favorite pizza crust was like, and what was so great about it.

As you can see in the pictures, the dough was definitely not rolled flat enough, and I ended up with a very puffy crust. Not my thing at all. And of course I had a brain fart while shopping - I was so focused on the secondary toppings and finding the dough that I forgot to buy tomato sauce and mozzarella. So it turned out to be a cross between a foccaccia and a pizza. But the toppings were quite tasty, and I'll be using the same combinations quite a bit in my future crust experiments.

On one side is Gruyère, caramelized onions, mushrooms, garlic and thyme. The other, Gruyère, caramelized onions, caramelized fennel, pancetta and thyme. Out of the oven, I topped the fennel side with a few arugula and frisée leaves. I only wish I had olives for some good ol' brininess. Yum yum.

As a side note: It's really nice to be writing and home-cooking again!