There is pizza dough in my refrigerator right now. I made it last night in about 20 minutes, 15 of which were spent reading a magazine while it rested. I’ll bake it tomorrow night under mozzarella, then put a small arugula salad on top, an homage to the Green and White pizza available at Roberta’s in Brooklyn.

The actual cooking of the pizza will take about 10 minutes, from first stretching the dough to pulling it from the oven, a bubbling cheese pie of enormous distinction and flavor. Add the time needed for the oven to heat and I’d still be waiting to get a delivery of an ordinary cheese pie from the pizza joint six blocks away.

Probably I’ll make two. I have enough dough for that. Everyone loves pizza night. “Particularly homemade pizza night,” says the youngest food critic in the family, our own Antoinette Ego.

Americans consume an enormous amount of pizza. Running the numbers with market analysts and industry spokesmen can set the mind to reeling. Those who track the business say pizza is a $40 billion industry in the United States, in no small part because 97 percent of us eat the stuff, most of us regularly, to the tune of 2.1 slices a sitting.