We have a standard kitchen, an oven, a pizza stone, one of those big wooden things to put the pizza on the pizza stone, and the following ingredients:
Raw, refrigerated packaged pizza dough
A jar of pizza sauce
A bag of shredded mozzarella cheese
Various vegetables and cold cuts
We’ve made pizza twice before, and both times the crust was sort of burnt on the edges and rather uncooked in the middle. How do we make a good pizza with a good crust, step-by-step?
Look on the pizza dough package for a temp. It may have instructions for a pizza stone but if it doesn’t, just throw the stone in 20 minutes early so it can get nice and hot. Roll out the dough but don’t push it or it will snap back into a smaller thicker crust. You want to attain the appropriate size through flattening and not stretching. Cover it in sauce. Add your veggies and cold cuts. Sprinkle cheese. Slide onto pizza stone, and bake until delicious. The preheated stone should help keep the middle from being underbaked when the edges are done and don’t put too much sauce on or the dough underneath will be raw still.
Huh. Never had that issue myself, with the crust burning and the middle uncooked.
First, if using a pizza stone, you have to preheat it for at least 30 minutes, preferably 45 or more. I put the cold stone in the cold oven while its preheating (although I don’t bother with pizza stones anymore.) I do my pizza hot, at 500F. 450F is the usual recommended temp, so start there.
I assemble the pizza on a lightly floured or cornmealed pizza peel. If you don’t have one of those, you just need something that you can slide pizza easily off onto the stone. When everything is preheated, I take the dough, form it into a pizza disk (I use my hands, you can roll it), top it, and throw it in the oven immediately to cook until the cheese just starts to brown.
Now, a little more detail. I add a fairly thin layer of sauce. I spoon or ladle a bit of sauce in the middle, then make an ever larger circular pattern with the spoon/ladle to spread the sauce outward towards the crust. I then add my sausage or pepperoni, mushrooms, cold cuts, etc., and then top with a sensible amount of shredded cheese.
If you’re using fresh mushrooms or very watery vegetables like bell peppers or zucchini, it often helps to precook them slightly to drive off some of that moisture. With mushrooms, I generally use them raw, but slice them thinly and don’t overload the pizza with them, as they will make the pizza soggy. If I want to make a full-on mushroom pizza, I will precook the mushrooms a bit, otherwise, you’ll get a soupy mess. Likewise, you can get away with a couple raw onions and raw peppers, but crowd them too much, and it will get soupy. I find that high heat helps with this, too. Cooking my pizza at 500F, it seems the pizza cooks before the vegetables let go of too much of their moisture. At 400-450, it’s a bit dicey, depending on how loaded with veggies the pizza is. If it’s a veggie only pizza, I will precook all the vegetables slightly. Even better is roasting them, so you get the additional roasted flavor as well as solving the too-much-moisture problem.
I thought pizza stones don’t work (as well) if you don’t put it right on the bottom of your oven (which you can’t for some models)?
If it would be easier without the pizza stone, I can take it out of the oven. This is for dinner tonight, so we won’t be cooking for a couple of hours or so.
Huh. I always hand stretch my doughs and never had any problem. Pizza dough is usually supposed to be stretchable. I mean, that’s what the guys who are tossing the pizzas at the parlors are doing, isn’t it? (Well, when they’re not using sheeters.)
To me, cast iron seems to work better and heats up faster (plus you can heat it up super high on your range, if you want.) I use something like this.
That said, the last few times I’ve been doing it on parchment paper, directly on the oven floor, then moving it up to the top rack to finish. I can’t vouch for anyone else’s oven, and the Internet seems to say this is a Bad Idea and that it Can’t Be Done, but it works a charm for me. Just requires constant attention and moving the pizza around to prevent the bottom from burning, but achieving those black flavorful flecks that make wood- and coal-fired pizza so tasty. Here’s an example, of using that method.
Note that I do not recommend the OP using that method. Just use the pizza stone you got, but make sure to preheat it good and long.
Throw out the jar of pizza sauce and make your own. There’s a ton of recipes out there on the interwebz, but here’s a start:
mix a can of tomato sauce and a can of tomato paste, thin it with a little water if it ends up too viscous. spices? Garlic, oregano, basil, rosemary, added until it tastes good. Throw in some fennel seed as well. Follow up with a smidge of salt and pepper.
Take it easy on the veggies. Too much, and you end up with a bunch of water coming out and making a soggy crust. If you’ve got green peppers and spinach, you’ll probably want to choose one or the other, but not both. Diced onions are good.
What kinda cold cuts ya got? Canadian bacon? Pepperoni? All good. Salami? Weird, but try it I guess. I like to fry up crumbled italian sausage and top the pizza with that.
Thanks so much everyone; I’ll post again after we eat to tell you how it turned out.
And by the way, I think one of our past problems was the soggy crust from too many (or too wet) vegetables- it gave the middle of the crust the consistency of raw dough. Hopefully we can fix that tonight.
Yeah, well, you’re pulykamell. When I do it, I end up with big ole crusts and half the pizza I wanted in the first place.
Some doughs don’t stretch out as well as others, though. I’ve noticed the Trader Joe’s dough, in particularly, is really springy, no matter how much I let it rest. I can’t seem to be able to stretch that one properly, but I’ve only tried it on two separate occasions before giving up on it. I usually make my own dough, but I do get lazy. You can also go to your favorite pizzeria and, if you ask nicely, they’ll sometimes sell the dough to you or even give it to you free.
Also, if you have a outdoor grill you can make a grilled pizza. Well, I guess now they’re called “grilled flatbreads.” Seems like pizza to me, they just have little to no sauce, and tend to be heavier on the veggies. Just make sure the dough or the grill is oiled well enough so it doesn’t stick. Grill the dough on one side, flip it, and load up the toppings until it’s all nice and melty.
Thanks everyone, it turned out great! Our first successful pizza.
Hurrah!
Coincidentally, I just watched Alton Brown make pizza on Good Eats the other day. He said that the crust should be stretched, not rolled, because rolled pizza is too flat and you want your crust thicker at the edges than in the middle. I think that’s just personal taste though.
He also used a pizza stone on the bottom of the oven, but he said that if your oven has the element there you can put the stone on a rack set at the very lowest shelf. And don’t bother ever taking it out; it will make everything you cook heat more evenly. But it seems to me that it may take your oven a lot longer to preheat, I don’t know.
Alton also made his own crust of course and let it rise in the fridge for 24 hours. Who plans their pizza that far in advance I ask you?
I use a cast iron pizza pan, oil it lightly, and let it heat with the oven to about 425-450. While that’s going on, I put the dough on a piece of parchment paper and roll it out. It takes patience, as it’s elastic. I recommend letting it sit on the counter in a bit of flour for about an hour before trying to roll it. Once it’s rolled out, I take the pan out of the oven, pick up the dough crust with the parchment paper, gently roll the dough onto one hand/forearm, peel the paper off, then roll it onto the pan. Then I use a dough docker up to about an inch from the edge of the pizza (or you can use a couple of forks, but it takes longer), which keeps the dough from rising once in the oven. Then comes sauce and ingredients. When it comes out, remove it with the peel and voila’.
To improve the stretchiness of pizza dough you have to break it first. Put the dough ball down on a flat surface and using the side of your fist beat the crap out of the thing. The idea is to hit the center of the dough ball to break that part, leaving the perimeter that will form the crust somewhat stiffer. Purchased dough is usually less stiff than what a pizzeria will use so you have to judge what you have to get it right.
Of course, I’m going to be one of those people. It really does make a big difference if you are the type of person that believes pizza is first about the crust. I have other recipes that I use when I’m more in a hurry, even yeastless ones. But waiting at least 24 hours with a slow rise does make a difference in the flavor.
Just put hot sauce on after you flip it and you can use plenty. If you can get or make shaved mozzerella that will melt faster too.
