You also need to wait a little while before eating, remember that the pizza arrives after sitting for a little while, not so at home
Y’know, by this time next year, there’s going to be a product that looks like a cordless drill, that will literally screw the pepperoni and salami slices down into the dough.
And Vince the Sham-wow guy will be hawking it on late-night television.
less sauce, non-prebaked skin, and this:
Except sausage!
Maybe it’s different if you are using precooked. Bleah!
Also, stay away from the precooked crusts. You can just buy pre-made bread dough and roll it for fine results. You do have to let it rise first.
If you prefer your vegetable ‘toppings’ al-dente instead of floppy and slimy, (I’m not a fan of NY-style, very-thin-sliced green peppers and onions where they just end up tasteless and worm-like, or worse, blackened) chopping them thick and putting them under the cheese leaves them crunchy, preserves the flavor, and adds to the texture of the pie. YMMV.
I’ve been making this exact pizza lately, with the already baked crusts. I agree with using just a little sauce, which is a tough temptation to resist since my main gripe with most pizza is the lack of sauce. Here’s a yummy tip though: buy some jarred pesto and mix it with some of your sauce. The taste is fantastic. I also buy Dei Fratelli tomato products and find them superior to other brands.
You could try making it deep-dish style, and add the sauce after the toppings. This requires a very thick sauce, but it’s delicious.
I have applied sauce in layers of the pizza. Often I’ve put some drizzled on the top.
I was just preparing the last two personal pan pepperoni pizza’s from a Little Caeser’s fundraising pizza kit, and they are surprisingly good, which kind of surprised me. But anyways, one thing that I noticed was that the cohesiveness, spread, and lay of the cheese is particularly good on these pizzas and I believe it has to do with the fine grate or shread of their mozzarella. It is not just a normal, medium grate, as you find in most preshredded bags of mozz, rather a very fine and even grate that kind of lays and layers, all over, lightly. I think a fine grated cheese might make for a more cohesive and tasty pizza in general, in most cases.
Less sauce, and shredded cheese really did the trick.
You might try moving on to making your own pizza crust. I do it all the time and it’s not a big hassle. It really only involves maybe ten more minutes of actual work than a pre-baked shell, and it will taste better and have less nasty chemicals.
When you get home from work, get a big bowl, throw in the ingredients (after a couple tries you probably won’t even need to measure them- bread is surprisingly forgiving) and spend maybe five minutes kneading the dough. Let it rest a few minutes while you check your email, then roll it out. It doesn’t need to be perfect- I usually just stretch mine out by hand and then pat it down on to the pan.
Watch TV, surf the Dope, make love or go running for a couple hours.
When it comes time to make dinner, your crust will be ready to go. Throw on your toppings, bake, and enjoy a truly home made pizza.