I'm in love with an Italian-American loudmouth who loves pizza.

Every Saturday, we'd visit a new place hopeful that it's the answer to our pizza prayers but ultimately disappointed and $50 + tip poorer. Ouch.

And every Saturday, my beloved loudmouth will swear never to go a pizza place ever again only to find a new pizza place for us to try next Friday night.

It's not his fault.

Tomato sauce runs through his veins.

And we live in a pizza desert.

Then I had a brilliant idea. 💡

What if I just make pizza?

It's just dough and tomato sauce and cheese right? That doesn't sound terribly expensive. Pizzas are usually made in pizza ovens but I'm sure there's a work-around.

Then I found pizza made in cast iron skillets! This is wonderful. Two cast iron skillets were the same cost as one very expensive pizza. We'll break even in no time.

I imagined making pizzas for my loudmouth boyfriend every weekend. It was a win-win. We'd save gas, money, time AND I get to declare my love in a love language my beloved loudmouth understands. Pizza!!!

It was a DISASTER.

Even with premade dough, it would stretch and tear no matter what I did. I eventually settled on these sad little discs.

The recipe called for preheated cast iron so then the kitchen became a circus of preheating, taking the burning hot cast iron pan out, slapping a sad little disc dough on it and swiping the sad disc with sauce and cheese before the pan cools. All this while trying not to burn myself. All for a sad, burnt little cracker disc with a little bit of sauce and cheese on top.

Loudmouth boyfriend said it really wasn't bad but I was so disappointed.

My dreams of pizza love-declaring Saturdays crumbled in front of me while I scraped off some more burn from the cast iron. We'll have to go back to $50pizzaseveryweekend.Andworse,now{I}^{\prime }m-$50 from buying these two useless cast iron skillets.

I hid the cast iron skillets in a corner of the pantry because everytime I saw them, all I could think about were sad, burnt discs.

But one day after an especially greasy, disappointing Costco pizza trip, I stumbled on this Kenji recipe for pan pizzas.

He called it foolproof.

1. Yes, you make the dough but you just let it do its thing. No kneading. 😶

2. The moist dough squishes and fills up the cast iron skillet by itself. No stretching! 😮

3. It's already in the pan...

😱😱😱

You mean I don't have to burn myself to make sad little pizza discs?!

I can just put the cold pan in the burning infernos of the oven and out comes PIZZA?

WHERE ARE MY SKILLETS?!

I followed the instructions exactly and it was painless, not something I could ever say about pizza-making before. It was so painless that it was fun. I could totally imagine making this with kids.

And when it came out of the oven, oh my gosh!!! It actually looked like a pizza!

But the real test was putting it in front of my beloved loudmouth boyfriend.

I held my breath.

Could it be? All the scenarios raced through my mind. It definitely wasn't Joe's Pizza at 3 AM in NYC. Was it enough? Will we have to go back to $50 pizzas?!

I watched him take a slice. I'm still holding my breath. I'm going to pass out.

Into the loud mouth the pizza goes.

Silence and then...

Oh gosh...This is either really good or really bad.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm...

Mmmmm....

Mmmmmmmm...

This is good.

And then there was no pizza left.

The loudmouth has been satisfied, my love-declaring pizza-making dreams have been restored, and I still can't believe I made pizza this good.

Thank you Kenji.

We'll never have to spend $50 on sad pizza ever again.