Pizza consistency

I grew up close to Italy and got used to good pizza. Coming to north America was somewhat sobering in terms of pizza experience. In Waterloo, Canada, good pizza was very hard to find - after years a bakery opened where the standards were respectable. It is much better in the SF Bay area.

So, being a cooking nut, I have been trying to find a way to make good pizza consistently. Until last year, consistency has been evasive. One time the pizza was great, and the other time it was either too soggy, or too cracker-like, or the toppings burned or whatever. Frustrating.

Last year I decided to ditch my non-stick pans and adopt cast-iron cookware. As I was becoming increasingly impressed by cast iron, I started to look for a large cast-iron griddle. I discovered the Lodge pizza pan that some people recommended using as a griddle. I ordered one with some trepidation. Where will I store it? It seemed big and heavy enough that one could use it as a shield in a medieval sword fight, so will the heft be too much?

The pan arrived, and I decided that or the time being I will store it in the oven. I think I can sweep issues under the rug with the best of them. I wonder whether this is why I got a broom as a gift at work one day... But I so digress.

So now I had the pizza pan AKA a giant griddle. Reviewers on Amazon swore the pan helped them bake the best pizza ever. Of course I had to try. The result was great, and I have been able to repeat it consistently. Go cast iron!

Half of the pizza, the other half has been consumed promptly

The first step in making pizza is pizza dough. Any respectable cook makes that from scratch. There is lots of fuss about making a perfect pizza dough, all the way to people getting water from New York that is apparently critical. I turned to breadtopia.com, my favorite bread-making site, and found a recipe that I could build on without starting a water transportation business. I highly recommend you watch their video on making sourdough pizza dough. What I do is a simple variation and a simplification. It is all about trivial food, after all.

To make the dough, I use about one-to-one ratio of sourdough starter and flour. If you follow breadtopia, you take 1.5 cups of sourdough and 1.5 cups of flour, but you can start with any amount you want. I eyeball the quantities as I find measuring sourdough starter messy. Remember to add a good pinch of salt to the flour, a teaspoon or so.

Sourdough starter that was just fed

In a case you wonder what sourdough starter looks like, here is a picture. One needs to feed sourdough periodically. As a part of feeding, one throws away about half of the starter, adds flour and water, and mixes everything together. Instead of throwing the starter away, I am using that as an opportunity to make some pizza dough, or to make bread.

Mix the starter and the flour with a spoon and then start mixing it with hands to get the feel for the moisture. If needed, add water by the tablespoon. If it is too wet, add a bit of flour. With some practice one develops a feel for what the dough should feel like. In an industrial setting one would weigh everything carefully and have a precisely repeatable process, always using exactly the same ingredients down to the brand. For small quantities, one can get away with some shooting from the hip.

Frankly, I usually add a bit too much water, which is easy to recover from when you knead the dough. The kneading is the fun part. I really like the stretch-and-fold move the Breadtopia dude does. Essentially you stretch the dough a bit and fold it together, turn a bit and repeat. the dough does tend to become sticky to me, so I add a pinch of four to the bowl, roll the dough in the flour, and repeat. Note that the Breadtopia dude adds some olive oil before kneading. I tried that and found it did not have much effect for me, other than making an additional mess. So I add a bit of flour. Let me make it clear - the Breadtopia dude tends to know what he is doing, so all I am saying is that my skills are lacking.

Nice and smooth pizza dough, ready to rise

Back to kneading: Repeat the stretch-and-fold routine with an occasional flour sprinkle until the dough becomes soft and elastic. I sometimes mix it up a bit and knead the dough in the old-fashioned way for a bit and then go back to stretch-and-fold.

Make a nice ball of dough, add a splash of oil in the bowl, and roll the ball in it.. If you want to use the dough right away, cover the bowl with the plastic wrap and let it rise until it about doubles.

More often than not, I want to use the dough later. I simply put the dough in a plastic bag, clip the bag at the end to give the dough the room to rise, and put the dough in the refrigerator. There the dough will rise slowly. Some say that slow rising develops a better flavor. I don't have a strong opinion about the flavor, but I do have a strong opinion about the convenience of slow rising :)

When I want to make pizza, take the dough from the fridge and leave it in a warm spot for about 1/2 hour to an hour so that the dough warms up. To preheat, set the oven to 450F, convection. For my oven, this means the temperature will be 425F. I used to bake pizza in 525F oven on a pizza stone, and oven-burning ovens go to 600-700F. So 425F is not all that hot, and your oven can surely go that high. Interestingly enough, one doesn't really need the 700F blast to make a great pizza! I still keep my pizza stone in the oven. mostly to collect and retain the heat for when I open the oven door.

While the oven is getting hot, assemble the pizza. You need enough dough to spread it over the pizza pan. I learned that if I start with about 3/4 cup of starter and 3/4 cup of flour, I get enough dough for one pizza. I grease the pan very very lightly, and then I use my fingers to stretch the dough in my hands, and then I simply press it across the pan in a very thin layer.

When the dough is in the pan, set the pan on top of a large burner and turn it on the medium heat. The purpose is that the pan starts to heat up while you finish the pizza assembly. At this point, you really cannot get distracted and walk away for half an hour, unless you want flat-bread overcooked or charred on one side only. Or a kitchen fire.

My goal is to have the dough that is not too thick, so the first step is to poke holes evenly all over the dough. I use a fork, and serious gadgeteers use a dough dock.

Now the pizza is ready for toppings. First brush the dough very lightly with olive oil. Then spread the pizza sauce, leaving some room at the edge. You can use any good tomato sauce as pizza sauce. If you don't make it yourself, I recommend the pizza sauce from Trader Joe's. I find it excellent!

The toppings are your call, just don't go too heavy. The dough needs an opportunity to bake through while the toppings heat through. My favorite pizza toppings are prosciutto with capers and mozzarella. To make it, tear up a few slices of prosciutto and distribute across the pie. Sprinkle with capers, but don't go too heavy on capers, they are quite salty. Finally, tear up some slices of fresh mozzarella and distribute those over the pie. The pizza is ready for the oven!

Remember that we set the pizza pan on a medium-hot burner, and remember that cast iron gets hot. It is kevlar-glove time! Any other oven mitt is totally inferior.

Place the pizza pan in the oven and bake for 12 minutes. Don't forget to turn off your burner! Depending on your oven, baking times may vary. This is where experimenting comes in place.

When the pizza is done, you can cut it directly in the pan, or slide it on a wooden board and cut it there. Do not use your expensive knife, the pizza is hot and the heat, I am told, affects the hardening of your knife. A cheap knife or a rotary pizza cutter work very well. If you place the pizza slices back on the pan, it will stay warm longer.