Hot And Fresh Delivery Pizza, Straight To You! (2)

(…Is Jacqueline looking over here?)

Yes, the red-haired girl was staring intently at my pizza from across the room.

But the moment she realized I had noticed her, she quickly looked away.

(…Oh, shoot. Could she steal the recipe if I let her see it…?)

For a moment, I considered hiding the pizza, but I quickly came to my senses and felt ashamed of myself.

Jacqueline would never copy me. After all, she’d said she was going to crush me.

There was no way someone like that would steal my recipe.

She was probably just curious about what I was making. That was all.

(What a small-minded thought… I just need to hold my head high. That’s right, confidently.)

Having made up my mind, I scooped up the pizza with a large peel and gently slid it into the stone oven.

We had a stone oven at home as well. The one I was used to, however, was much smaller than this.

When the size changed, I couldn’t immediately tell how hot each part of the oven was.

I also needed to watch the flames and adjust the firewood accordingly.

Somehow, while enduring the waves of heat pouring from the stone oven, I gauged the temperature inside and kept turning the pizza as I checked how evenly it was baking.

“Remember, Shirley… Remember what the pizza makers you saw on TV and in videos used to do…! That’s right, channel the spirit of a pizza chef! I am a pizza chef. Bob, a master pizza chef who baked pizza every single day for thirty years. But one day, while Bob was swimming in the ocean, he was attacked by a shark and never came home…!”

As I muttered all that under my breath and stared intensely at the pizza, Anne watched me with the sort of lukewarm gaze that seemed to say, “Is she going to be okay…?”

Poor Bob probably didn’t appreciate being dragged across worlds either, but with Bob successfully installed in me, I shifted the pizza again and again before pulling it out at what felt like exactly the right moment.

“It’s doooone! Wooooow, it looks sooo good!”

A piping-hot pizza appeared before me, and I shouted on pure instinct.

Because it was pizza. Pizza!

Having a freshly baked pizza appear right in front of you was an amazing thing, wasn’t it?

“We don’t have time to cook today, so why don’t we order pizza?”

Or, “It’s your birthday today, so why don’t we order pizza?”

Pizza always appeared alongside little surprises like those, making it the ultimate entertainer that filled children’s hearts with excitement.

With a superstar of a dish like pizza appearing right before my eyes, it would have been stranger not to get excited.

Yes, even if I had made it myself.

“Oh… That’s nice. It looks delicious. What’s this dish called?”

“Pizza. Meat pizza. Hehehe.”

After answering Anne, I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I placed the pizza on a cutting board and chopped it into eight slices with a knife.

Ahh, what a wonderful feeling. It seemed the crust had baked properly.

“Pizza? That’s an unusual name. I’ve never heard of it.”

“I figured you hadn’t. Here, have a taste. Careful, it’s hot.”

While chatting, Anne and I each picked up a slice and inspected the cross-section.

The thick layer of cheese had melted properly, and the crust was nicely firm.

The toppings had cooked beautifully too, and I simply couldn’t resist. I immediately took a big bite of the pizza.

“Mmmmmmm… Delicious!”

It had been so long… No, it had been since my previous life since I’d last eaten pizza, and it was absolutely delicious.

The piping-hot, gooey cheese, all that meat and dough, and the pizza sauce blended together and ran wild inside my mouth.

Every flavor melded into one glorious whole, sending my happiness through the roof.

Carbs, fat, meat. All the things people loved had gathered together in one place.

And cheese, one of humanity’s great achievements and the quintessential fermented food, brought them all together into pizza. There was no possible way it could taste bad.

“Wooow, this is incredible…! It’s just… amazing!”

Anne enthusiastically munched away at her pizza too.

Well, of course she did. Most people reacted like this the first time they tasted pizza.

We devoured the whole pizza as though fighting over it, then sighed blissfully as happiness washed over us.

However.

(…But maybe this isn’t the best it could be.)

That thought suddenly occurred to me.

This pizza had certainly been delicious. But only in the sense that pretty much any pizza was delicious.

Since it was homemade, I was perfectly satisfied eating it myself, of course.

But was this really good enough to serve to someone else?

It had certainly cooked all the way through. But the heat had been uneven in places, and I felt some parts were overbaked while others weren’t baked quite enough.

There might also have been too much cheese for the thickness of the crust. Maybe I had piled on too many toppings as well.

And above all else… it lacked savory depth.

There were probably two reasons for that.

The first was that I hadn’t used any vegetables.

Pizza normally gained more savory flavor from things like onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers.

I had left the vegetables out because I thought the young master would prefer it that way, and that was probably why the flavor felt somewhat flat.

And the other problem… might have been that the crust itself simply wasn’t very tasty.

I felt like the flavor of the dough was being overwhelmed by all the other ingredients.

“Hey, Shirley, what’s wrong? Is this not good enough?”

When I folded my arms and groaned thoughtfully, Anne asked me with a worried look.

“Yeah. I was thinking there’s still a long way to go. I can’t serve this to the young master.”

“Really? I think it’s plenty delicious already…”

Anne said that, but I couldn’t accept it.

That’s right. When it came to the towering mountain known as pizza, this was barely at the level of reaching its foothills.

There was no way the Bob inside me would forgive that.

I could practically hear Bob saying with a disappointed look, “Oh, pretty baby, can you really put this in front of people and call it ‘pizza’? Even the senile old man next door would get mad and throw this out the window.”

Sorry, Bob.

“No, this won’t do. We need to experiment a whole lot more. For now, we’ll use up the dough we’ve already made, and we’ll rethink the next batch. We’ll cut down on the cheese and try all sorts of things to figure out what we can add to bring out more savory flavor.”

“Okay! Just keep giving me instructions. I’ll handle all the prep work!”

Anne replied energetically.

And so began our quest to create the ultimate pizza.

…Or so it did.

In truth, it would prove to be a journey filled with hardship.