Growing up in the '60s, my father made pizza every Saruday night, without fail! Always hot Italian sausage (simmered on the stove before skinning and crumbling on top of the pie), always mozzarella (cut up into little cubes so it could be evenly distributed), always tomato sauce. (Parmesan was for sprinkling afterward, not for cooking the pie.) Most of the time he made a yeast dough. Occasionally he'd make a Bisquick-based dough "just for a change," or when we (oops!) ran out of yeast - we liked it, but went right back to yeasted dough the next week. We did try the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza in a box (adding the regularly scheduled suasage and mozzarella, along with Pop's Secret Ingredient, and holding off the grated cheese until after baking) and decided it was OK as an Emergency Pizza. Pop's secret ingredient? The water used to simmer the sausages! He used that instead of tap water for the dough, whether it was yeast or Bisquick. He poured it out into a measuring cup, added enough tap water to make enough water for the dough, and proofed the yeast in it, sitting the cup on the stove over the pilot light. There was just enough oil rendered from the sausages' fat to make the dough "just right", and he always put oregano in the dough, too. Ah, the memories!

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