On Sept. 27, the Office of Sustainability held a pizza-making workshop as their second workshop of the year. Students met at the edible garden behind Royce Hall and were shown how to find ripe vegetables from the garden and how to harvest them. At the workshop, students were asked to find tomatoes and basil for the pizza. Once they were finished harvesting their ingredients from the garden, participants went inside to begin making their pizza.

After washing their hands, the students were given dough for the crust and had to form it in the shape of a mini pizza. Once the dough was stretched, students began cutting up the basil, tomatoes and garlic for the sauce. The sauce was blended with salt and pepper to help speed up the process. Unlike most pizza sauce, which is a distinct red, the sauce turned into a green color which came from a mixture of it being blended from the fresh basil. After the blending, students put the finishing touches by putting the sauce on the dough and spreading fresh mozzarella cheese on the pizza before students had to take it home to cook. The pizzas were not made at the event due to the lack of oven space.

The turnout of this event was higher than last week’s salsa-making workshop. Around two dozen students were in attendance. The students learned some interesting information while making pizza, like how pizza was originally made around the late 1800’s in Naples, Italy, to honor the queen. Another fact is that when the pizza is made traditional style, the colors resemble the Italian flag. Students learned by experience that pizza dough will stretch out then try to revert back to its original form. The elasticity sometimes makes the process a difficult task.

This was just one of the weekly events being held by the Office of Sustainability. Their next event will be the Prairie Seed Collection Workday on Saturday, Oct. 2, at 10 a.m.