I made a pizza for dinner, which I haven’t done in quite a long time. Made the sauce from scratch from garden tomatoes and herbs. Topped with fresh basil, Italian sausage and a cheese mixture.
The crust dough was pretty typical: bread flour, water, sugar, salt, yeast, olive oil.
We have an old pizza pan, which is light-weight and has holes all over the bottom to, I guess, allow better crisping. But the end result was a crust that was pretty pale on the bottom, and somewhat doughy.
If you’re doing thin get a stone and forget the pan. Make sure you preheat the stone at least 30 minutes and cook ther pizza directly on it, makes a world of difference
If you’re doing pan (thick crust), get a cast iron pan and put about 2 tablespoons of good olive oil in it before you put in the dough. Fry it just a bit to get the oil hot and then pop that sucker in the oven (I lke to go about 450-500) and as soon as the cheese is melty take it out. If the dough is under cooked you can always par bake the crust for 5 min before you add any toppings.
Pizza stones are really helpful to get a crispy crust. I have both the wooden peel and a metal peel and do a 2 step cook. Stretch out the dough thin onto the wooden peel, add the sauce, and start cooking for 3-4 minutes. Then take it out with the metal peel, add cheese and toppings, then finish for 5-7 more minutes. I usually have the oven temperature at 400-425. Having a second peel also makes it much easier to make multiple pizzas.
Also, knead the dough for a long time, one time my wife left it kneading longer than usual to do something, and the crust came out a lot better. Knead it longer than you think it needs.
Thanks, all. The raw dough was pretty sticky, also. So perhaps more flour is called for, even though I used the amount in the recipe. Oven was 450F and and the cheeses browned nicely. Not too much sauce, so I don’t think that was the problem. Pre-baking may be the answer here, as I don’t want to invest in more equipment that I rarely use.
I personally find a cast iron pizza pan works better than a stone for me. Something like this. Just preheat it first, either in the oven or over the stovetop. You want that bottom nice and hot.
Lately, though, I’ve been doing something people have told me either can’t be done or shouldn’t be done to great success, and it requires no long wait, except for the regular oven preheat. If you have a typical gas oven like mine, where the heat comes from below, I just put my pizza on the oven floor after it preheats to 450. I put the dough on parchment paper (to make it easier to get in and out–it doesn’t affect the browning), assemble, and put it on the floor of the oven for about 2-3 minutes . Find out what timing works best for you, because it goes fast from “crispy and nice light flecking” to burnt. I have a metal pizza peel to make getting it in and out in a hurry a snap. I do the same thing with frozen pizza.
I’ve read several message boards that say this can’t be done, or won’t work, but either I have a quirky oven that makes this possible, or they have never tried it. It works, and, for the kind of pizza I like, it works better than that cast iron pan or pizza stone, and I don’t have to wait a goddamned hour for the thing to come up to temp. The only issue I see is even-ness of heating. I do try to rotate the pizza halfway though the first part of the process. But, other than that, it works–at least for me.
So the question is: how do you get the pizza dough spread onto the hot iron? Perhaps if my dough wasn’t so sticky, I could roll it out on a heavily floured board, add the ingredients, and just pick it up with a peel. What I had to do with this one was to form in into the pan, which was cold. Also, the finished product was too thick for my tastes.
I just slide it off my peel onto the iron. This takes a little practice, and requires a little jiggling of the dough on a lightly floured (or cornmealed) peel. You kind of have to work fast as your assembling the pizza to keep it from sticking. (How fast you have to work depends on how wet/sticky your dough is.) I generally give the peel a jiggle every ten seconds or so to make sure things are nice and sliding around. If one little piece of dough sticks and catches, get ready for a mess. (I believe this happens at least once to everyone when they are first learning.)
Or, the foolproof method: Use parchment paper. It works great. Pizza browns just as good (from my experience) as without. Save yourself the stress, stretch out or roll out your dough on the parchment paper itself and transfer over to the hot pan.
More tips for pizza dough: if you have the forethought, age the dough in the fridge at least overnight, preferably 24 hours. It really does make a difference in flavor.
For more tips, the best resource I’ve found on the net is:
This is part of the reason I cook in 2 stages. I can get the pizza rolled out, sauced and in the oven pretty quick, and I can give it a vigorous shake without having stuff fall off everywhere. Once it’s half cooked, the pizza slides in and out without a fuss, so the toppings stay put.
That way works, too. It’ll give the dough a different feel, though. I like it when the top kind of melts into the middle. When you parcook, the top has a sort of “crust” around it. Both are good–I mean, I make pizza with Middle Eastern flatbread when I’m in a hurry, but the ultimate, for me, is that bit of soft, watery melding that occurs between the toppings and the dough in a pizza that’s cooked on raw dough.
We throw the rolled out dough on an air-pan cookie sheet and bake it for ~5 minutes, then take it out, flip it, and put our toppings on. Works really well so far.
I also bake my base for a few minutes before i top it and cook as hot as possible. Turns out about right, haven’t bothered to go the pizza stone, would only complicate the process
Off-topic, but I hope you don’t mind answering - would you mind posting your pizza sauce recipe, ChefGuy? We like a really tasty, skunky pizza sauce - all the regular ones are so bland! I’m willing to give making it from scratch a try if we can get a really tasty one.
Pizza sauce is really just a marinara without the vegetables, and with a heavier dose of oregano, IMO.
I just faked it, but it came out right. I ran some garden tomatoes through the food mill to remove the skin and seeds, but you could probably just use a can of crushed tomatoes or even tomato sauce, but I’d reduce the amount of paste that I put in for the latter. Anyway, the result is a very watery tomato juice, probably about a half-to-three quarters of a cup or so. Dumped that into a saucepan and added about a third of a can of tomato paste to thicken, then a generous amount of dried oregano, maybe a tablespoon (I don’t measure), maybe a teaspoon of sage and thyme. I also threw in a sprig of rosemary, just because I love the stuff. Forgot to mince up some garlic, so added a small amount of garlic powder and some ground pepper. Then simmer until it’s reduced to about a half cup or less (I go by eyeballing the sauce for thickness. Too soupy means wet crust), and remove the rosemary sprig. I let it cool before topping the dough with it.
I swear by a stone. Leave it on the bottom of the oven all the time; it keeps the temperature more consistent for all your baking.
More thoughts on your pale, doughy crust: Your sauce may be too watery; pizza sauce should be quite a bit thicker than pasta sauce. Your dough is too wet; it should not be sticky – try theLehmann Pizza Dough Calculator or one of the others. Too much sauce or other toppings could also be a problem; go easy on them – a good crust is the star of good pizza. Also, forget 450, turn your oven up as high as it will go and be sure to do a long preheat, no less than 40 minutes.
I like to use the dough on the 2nd or 3rd day after making it; the flavor has time to develop. If you really want to get freaky with it, look up “autolyze”.
ETA: Yep, your sauce is too watery. There is room for debate but I am strongly in the camp of pizza sauce should not be precooked, it will cook on the pizza … and tomato paste has no place in pizza sauce, it has too much of a “cooked” flavor, pizza sauce should taste “fresh”.
I agree. I never ever cook my pizza sauce. However, the paste thing–my favorite tomatoes for pizza are 6-in-1 brand, which are ground tomatoes mixed heavy puree, so they make for a good consistency for an American-style pizza sauce. Not sure if “heavy puree” is quite a paste or not, but it’s perfect for pizza, and great flavor. Here’s a link. Otherwise, I just drain some canned tomatoes (Muir Glen or Red Gold), zip 'em up roughly with a stick blender, and then salt, maybe a sprinkle of oregano, and a touch of garlic, maybe not. Just plain 6-in-1 tastes great to me. I’ve found out that most of my favorite pizzas only use plain tomato sauce, salt, and a zip of oregano maybe, and that’s it.
