My oven has this cool feature where you set the time to bake and then it automatically turns off after that time. (I never thought I would say something as homemaker as “my oven has this cool feature” but it's been said so let's move on.) I preheated, threw a pizza in, set it for 15 minutes, AND FORGET IT! (Sorry, Ron jumped into my head.) I figured I'd go to the grocery store, take my time (since the oven turns off automatically) and come back to a fresh pizza at my leisure.
Unfortunately, while the oven does “turn off,” the built-up heat doesn't necessarily “go anywhere.” Except for into the pizza more…and more…and more.
BURNT PIZZA, MMMMM!!!
The disappointment smelled sort of like Pizza Day (Friday) in middle school, when they served those nasty-ass rectangles of “pizza” to hundreds of brain-washed 12-year-olds who temporarily forgot that establishments like Papa John's, Little Caesar's, and Domino's even existed. I never ate pizza on Pizza Day. But every Friday, I had to put up with the irrational excitement from 8am-11:45am, when kids could think of nothing else besides their sacred rectangle, half-burnt, cafeteria-stank pizza…with a side of corn…which nobody ever ate.
Normally, at middle school lunch, if you didn't want the featured food, you had a couple of other tolerable choices. But on FRIDAY. Oh man, if you didn't want PIZZA on Friday, TOUGH LUCK. The cafeteria workers KNEW you would be ridiculed for complaining about the lack of options besides pizza…because who DOESN'T WANT PIZZA?? So every Friday, I'm convinced the workers got up early, prepared a huge batch of pizza, threw it in the oven, neglected preparing any other choices, and just went home. Who knows, maybe they even did some grocery shopping. Then one worker (decided by drawing straws) had to come back to pull the pizza out of the oven and slop the burnt rectangles onto our trays.
To this day, Friday mornings still evoke the distinct, nasty aroma of the pizza/corn combination platter.
May God have mercy on our noses.