I’m going to provide the crust, sauce and a few basic toppings. Guests will bring their favorite toppings and we’ll all put together some pizza’s and pop them in the oven. Everybody thinks it’s a great idea, but I’m a little sketchy on the details. So, help me, please. I plan to use ready-made pizza dough and I may buy or make the sauce. What are some must-have toppings? What should I serve beside the pizza? Any munchie and desert ideas? This is a Friday after work gathering, so everything needs to be done in advance. I know there are lots of super cooks and party-givers on these boards, so give me your ideas. Recipes will be very welcome too.
Just a suggestion for the crust/sauce: Chef Boyardee pizza kits are easy to make and taste good. The dough actually turns out better if it’s given a few hours to rest between mixing and using, so you could prepare it in advance and be all set.
The mix says to bake at 450, but I ignore that and crank the oven as high as it will go. When it comes to baking pizza, hotter = better.
As far as toppings:
Cheeses - I use regular-shredded mozzarella and Parmesan. Romano and Asiago cheeses would work well if you want a little more flavor.
Meats - You might want to have some browned and drained ground beef prepared, as well as pepperoni. I would assume that any other meats would fall under the “bring your own toppings” part of the evening.
Vegetables - I don’t really do vegetables on pizza.
Ready made pizza crust? Not that overpriced Boboli stuff I hope? Pizza crust is easy to make; check out The Joy Of Cooking for a basic recipe. Ditto for sauce; get a 28 oz can of crushed Italian tomatos, mix in the blender with a tablespoon of olive oil, half a teaspoon each of dried oregano and rosemary (or about three times as much fresh), and add salt and pepper to taste.
As for toppings, make sure you have some garlic and/or shallots on hand, as well as onions, peppers, mushrooms, black olives, zucchini, eggplant, tomatos, fresh basil, et cetera. (I’m not big on putting meat on pizza, but if it’s your thing get some prosciutto, pepperoni, smoked ham, sausage, whatever.) One thing I tried recent that came out rather well was bleu cheese; you’d think it would be too sharp and pungent, but the baking makes it rather mild and kind of tangy, and it goes well with some red onion. I’m not a fan of the thick clumps of aged mozzarella most people put on pizza; try using more sparse amounts of different cheeses, like fontana (good with mushrooms), smoked provolone, sharp cheddar, et cetera. And give goat milk cheese a try, especially with olives, garlic, and peppers to make kind of a Greek pizza.
Make sure you use a pizza stone to get the crust crispy, and preheat for at least 30 minutes. I use parchment paper to keep the the crust from sticking to the stone as its a lot less messy than cornmeal.
Bruschetta is the classic appetizer for Italian-type cuisine, and really easy. Try brushing the freshly toasted slices with a slice of garlic clove, then garnish with fresh mozzarella, sliced roma tomatos, and or a basil leaf.
I like wine with pizza (a nice pinot noir or sangiovese with a strongly-flavored tomato base, but if white wines are your thing that’s good too) but good beer is never unwelcome.
Bon appetit, and let us know how it turns out.
Stranger
If you make your own sauce make sure it is from a recipe specifically for pizza. Most pasta sauces are too bitter to make good pizza sauce. My wife makes the best pasta sauce in the world but it tastes horrible on a pizza. We use Ragu Pizza Quick sauce. As an Italian it pains me to say Ragu but the pizza sauce is actually good.
I always make my own dough in the bread maker. I have several recipes including some whole wheat pizza doughs that come out great.
Pizza stones work much better than regular metal pizza sheets. The crust is much firmer on the bottom.
I like a lot of toppings on a home made pie. Any veggies I put on are cooked first. I hate raw veggies on a pizza.
Your only problem is going to be logistics. How many pies are you making? It’s best if you only do one at a time in a regular oven. If you do two make sure you rotate them between the shelves so they have equal time near the burner/heating element.
I’ve actually done this on a fairly small scale (one other couple). All of the above suggestions are good (I don’t have a pizza stone, so I can’t comment on that). My wife makes the pizza dough (we’ve recently been adding the oregano/basil and parmesan directly to the dough, it works pretty good).
One thing that I ran into was the fact that people aren’t a very good judge of the balance of toppings. What I mean is people say they like a lot of toppings, or they really like a particular topping, and they keep adding and adding. You end up with so much topping that it doesn’t get done as fast as the crust, and it becomes a soggy mess. Remember to spread the toppings evenly too, don’t pile everything in the middle or you’ll end up with the same soggy problem. You may even want to spread everything out slightly from the center as the toppings will tend to cook toward the center.
That’s all I can think of. You can’t really beat homemade pizza, we usually have it 3-4 times a month. It’s gotten to be where we don’t even really like take out pizza.
Oh, I did think of one more thing. If you have real dough (not the pre-baked stuff) you can go ahead and get creative. What I’ll do is roll the dough out and make what I call calzones. Roll out the dough. Place desired toppings and cheese in the middle (I don’t usually use sauce, but you could). Leave about 1/2 inch crust all the way around. Roll out more dough in the same shape, but slightly larger (to accommodate the toppings). Place over the toppings and seal the edges. Put a couple slits in the top crust. Place on a baking sheet and put in the oven until browned. If you have any left over, they make great lunches.
Above all, have fun.
Take care,
GES
Thank you for all the great ideas and advice. I was going to use the Pillsbury crust in the biscuit can, but, duh, I have a bread machine. I will also blend up some sauce, I didn’t know it was that simple. But I’ll get a jar of the Ragu to be on the safe side. And I’m going to borrow one pizza stone and buy one of my own, seems like a handy thing to have. This going to be great fun.
Another question - I have a convection oven, so I’m hoping to bake two pizzas at a time. Will this work?
Pizza stones (or more generally, baking stones) are a very useful thing to have. They’re great for baking bread, or indeed anything. I usually throw one in when baking lasagna (on a shelf just a couple of inches below the pan) because it creates more even heating.
Making sauce is trivial, and I guarantee it’ll taste better than anything out of a can. But then, Ragú[sup]TM[/sup] has always pissed me off for the simple reason that it’s not actually a ragù sauce! A ragù is a sauce made from simmered meat with onion, pepper, carrot, garlic, et cetera and a small amount of thickened tomato sauce (tomato paste) to give it consistancy. Ragú[sup]TM[/sup] is a tomato base with a few flavorings (and a lot of FD&C #5). It’s like calling your soup “New England Clam Chowder” and not actually having any clams in it! Grr…
Anyway, back to reality, have fun with the party. It sounds like a good time. Hey, if you’re going to pick up some wine, try the Ca’ del Solo Sangiovese. Never mind the screwtop; it’s a great sangiovese and will go well with any strong-flavored pizza.
Stranger
Oh, two pizzas at a time: it depends. I think baking stones in a convection oven might be less effective, but it’s hard to say. Make a couple of pizzas and try it out before hand. You can actually make the crust a day or two before hand (it actually seems to taste better and have more texture if you let it sit in the fridge for a day), and the cost is miniscule; I actually worked out the cost per pizza–not including labor–to be around $6-$8, and that’s using premium cheese and fresh toppings. I agree with Green Eyed Stranger; I’ve gotten so spoiled with my own pizza, I don’t really even care to eat it out, save for Angeli Caffe, which I consider the best Rustic Italian restuarant in LA.
Stranger
A previous thread on homemade pizza here.
Another interesting topping for an at home pizza party is an egg… I kid you not. They do it quite alot on pizza in northen Europe and it is really good. So, make up a pizza like you normally would with whatever toppings you want. Put it in the oven, but about half-way through the cooking crack a raw egg right in the center of the pizza and let pizza continue to cook. Basically, what you are after is the pizza being cooked completely with the cheese melty and just starting to turn brown around the edges, and the egg whites should be solid, but the yolk just a bit runny. Kind of like a sunny side up egg. It may sound weird with a fried egg on top your pizza and a runny yolk… but try it and I think you’ll like it. It’s not something you would do all the time, but it adds a new interesting twist at a party.
I do two pizzas on two stones at a time in my convection oven all the time. Works great!
Have you thought about how to get the pizza off of whatever you’re assembling it on and onto the stone? Without a doubt, this is the trickiest step of making homemade pizza. Do you have a pizza peel? It makes life MUCH easier. If not, you can wing it with a flat cookie sheet, but it can be tricky. Here’s some tips:
-
USE PARCHMENT PAPER. If this is your first time, parchment will save your butt. Just make each pizza on a piece of baking parchment, and transfer it from your peel/cookie sheet/whatever to the stone by sliding it around on the parchment. This will make your life a lot easier.
-
If you have a peel and are brave, you can practice pizza pushing without the parchment. Make sure that the underside of the pizza has a lot of corn meal, semolina or flour underneath it (I like corn meal/semolina as it’s a bit coarser than normal flour). I often lift up part of the pizza with a spatula or something and throw a bunch of corn meal underneath it.
Do NOT make the pizza right on the peel. The peel will get all wet and icky and the pizza will stick to it, and it will be hard to get subsequent pizzas on and off.
Once the pizza is transfered to the peel (it shouldn’t be hard to do this if the bottom of the pizza is properly cornmealed), shake the peel once or twice. You want to make sure the pizza is free moving and slips around. Careful, don’t drop it - you’re just testing to see that there’s no sticky spots. If there are, use a spatula and put more cornmeal/whatever under that part until the pizza moves freely.
The reason for this is that you don’t want to be putting the pizza on the stone in the oven, have half the pizza on the stone, and the other half sticking to the peel. Trust me; this is not a fun situation.
Once the pizza is moving freely, put it on the stone. You want the pizza on the edge of the peel, and use a slight jerk along with a smooth pull back to move it off the peel onto the stone. This is a lot easier than it sounds, as long as the pizza is not sticking to the peel.
Just in case I wasn’t clear, make sure the pizza doesn’t stick to the peel. I give you this knowledge after long and hard practice and lots of pizza stuck to the bottom of my oven. 
Fun idea, Tess! It may sound a little odd, but walnuts are great on pizza. My favorite combo is walnuts, spinach and feta. Homemade sauce is the way to go.
In terms of desserts, I’d do something light and citrus-y. Folks are going to be so full of your tasty pizza that they probably won’t want something very rich. You could do a lemon sorbet or lemon bars. Store-bought sherbet with Pepperidge Farm cookies is another tasty and easy option.
I love the Boboli pizza crust. I haven’t done these in years, but I think I’ll pick some up this weekend.
My only advice is to make sure that you have all the popular toppings covered.
My personal favorite: Sausage, mushroom and fresh tomato. Oh yeah…
This is a very good pizza sauce recipe. I made it with a can of tomato sauce and one of paste since I didn’t have any tomato puree at home, and it was the perfect consistency.
Remember not to oversauce your pizza. I love sauce, so I used to overdo it, and things would get slick and fall off. Now I’ve learned to heat up some sauce to serve on the side for dipping my pizza slice in so I get the extra sauce I love with a pizza that can actually be held.
For the crust, I’ve also gone to my local pizza joint and just bought dough from them. It’s usually as cheap as store bought, and I know it’s a quality dough. Stop by and ask.
Making pizza takes time, if you do 2 pizzas in the oven at once, that’s 5 cooking cycles to get pizzas for 10 people. At 10min per cycle, that’s nearly an hour until the last person gets to eat, so non-pizza noshes need to be available.
For appetizers, one of my favorites is tomato/mozzarella/basil salad, on a stick. One cherry/grape tomato, one small mozzarella ball, one leaf of basil on a toothpick, sprinkled with salt/pepper and balsamic vinegar. Get a plate with some cubed cheeses, sopresatta and other cured meats, marinated artichokes, olives (gotta have olives).
You guys are making me want pizza.
You could also try grilling your pizza if you have a grill with a lid. Start the coals then push them to the sides put a pizza stone down in the center (I have one I use just for grilling pizzas). Toss some wood chips on the coals and put the pizza on the stone. Cooks in about 10 minutes. Just like a wood fired brick oven. Motz really picks up the smoke. I like to use apple wood it gives a sweet smokey flavor. Yum.
And you can have a selection of sauces too, you don’t need just tomato. Pesto makes a great pizza sauce…this is just basil, garlic and olive oil whirled together in a food processor. Or tapenade. But I agree, sauce lightly, you don’t need much.
And making pizza dough from scratch is dead simple and about 20 times cheaper than buying frozen dough. I like to use 1/2 white and 1/2 whole wheat flour.
Best pizza combo ever is pesto sauce, green olives, feta, mozzarella, sun dried tomatos, chicken and artichoke hearts.