I lined the top and bottom of my oven with unglazed quarry stone. I adjusted the thermostat to read 35 degrees below normal (so 550 was really 585).

The result?

Best pizza ever.

Five of the six pies, after baking for three minutes, I froze for later use. The sixth I topped with St. Pete's blue cheese, golden delicious apples, salt, pepper, and agave syrup. Probably the best thing I've ever put in my mouth.

Will let everyone know the results of the freezing once I decide to thaw and cook in the next two weeks.

So, I recently received a pizza stone and I was wondering how to best use it and if anyone had any good pizza dough recipes. OR if it would just be easier to purchase the dough (please list good brands or locations to purchase.)

Vace on Conn. Ave has servicable pre-made dough.

Homemade is very easy. My husbands usually follows Alton Brown's recipe.

As does Litteri, from what I understand.

My pizza stone just split in two, recently, when I impatiently topped the raw dough w hot tomato sauce and failed to slide the pie on neatly.

Morals: It pays to invest in a paddle, too. Let your toppings cool, first.
* * *
I use Deborah Madison's recipe in *Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone*--an improvement over earlier ones. A little bit of flour that isn't bleached or unbleached white adds flavor. Even better is a dough you make ahead (like the stores do) and "age" a couple of days in the fridge. You have to let it sit out on the counter to return to room temperature for a while--as you must with store-bought doughs.

Grammar! That should read "my husbands usually FOLLOW".

For the past few years, I've been using the whole wheat pizza dough recipe from The New Basics Cookbook. It's not quite half whole wheat flour, which I find adds some extra body but isn't too heavy.

These are the ingredients:
1 cup warm water
1 pkg. active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

This makes 2 pizzas, about 12" each.

Click for dough recipe.

Really, pizza dough is so easy (and FUN) that there's no excuse for buying storebought. Your dough (and subsequent crust) is one of the most important parts of your pizza, and the only way to ensure quality control is to do it yourself. Sure, toppings are great and you can really be creative with them... but would you buy a gorgeous diamond and set it in brass?

PS - I've never broken a pizza stone. I've spilled all kinds of crap on mine, too. Maybe I'm just lucky?

Yes yes YES. More than fancy flour or snazzy herbs or imported water does a good cold ferment contribute to the flavor and texture of your dough. You should never make pizza from scratch unless you can devote at LEAST eight hours of fridge time to the dough.

Sometime this weekend or next I'll be modifying my dough recipe - no gluten, and replace half the bread flour with semolina. Very interested to see how it comes out. Report to follow.

This is the recipe I use:

Pizza Dough

2 tsp yeast
1.5 c warm water
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
4 c flour
Cornmeal

Combine water and yeast. Whisk in oil and salt. Gradually add flour. Push together and knead by hand until smooth. Put in oiled bowl, cover with plastic, and let rise until doubled. Punch down and let rise overnight in refrigerator. Scatter cornmeal on peel. Pull dough into a round of desired thickness. Place on peel. Top as desired and shake onto stone. Bake at 500 degrees in a stone oven, usually about 10 minutes.

This recipe makes two medium-sized pizzas with a nice, not-thick not-thin crust.

Be sure you heat the oven with the stone for at least 45min before you bake the pizza. Also, jerk the peel with the dough on it around a few times before you top the pizza to be sure the pizza is moving (if not, take the dough off and add more cornmeal). Top it quickly because if it sits on the peel with a bunch of wet toppings for too long, the dough gets wet and sticks to the peel. Also, I don't own a peel so I use a medium-sized wood cutting board instead (use wood because if it touches the hot stone it won't melt). I usually slide an offset spatula under the pizza before I pull it out to make sure it's not sticking to the stone.

My husband also uses Alton's recipe. In the name of making tools multitask, we use a splatter screen as our pizza paddle. Works perfectly fine for us. Although we usually have parchment paper under the rolled out dough too.

Thanks! I plan trying one of these recipes over this weekend.

Whatever recipe you use, make a large batch. After the first rise break it up into 1lb. portions and freeze them for future use. You can take it out of the freezer in the morning and have it ready to go by dinner.

Thanks! The dough is done and i will certainly do that. First pizza comes out of the oven at noon today. WOHO!

Used the recipe above and it was GREAT! Kudos!

My excuse is that the frozen pizza dough at the Italian Store costs about $1.25, or slightly more, and tastes just fine.

Made a batch of pizza on Sunday. Read on for what I made and some tips to take to the bank.



Going clockwise from the upper left:

-My toppings mise en place

-Plain cheese pizza. For the first time, I made my own tomato sauce rather than relying on storebought. Usually I use the stuff from the store simply because making the sauce at home just means another dirty pot. Not sure I'll go back, though. Mine was made with tomatoes I dried in the oven at around 300 degrees, which gave the sauce a wonderful sweetness and an almost smoky flavor, which was an absolute delight as, without a wood burning oven, I am unable to get the rustic smokiness I so love in American Flatbread's pies any other way.

-This was my take on AF's "Revolution" pizza. I sweated some onions for about forty-five minutes in olive oil, layered that on some of the tomato sauce, topped with cheese, and finished with a ton of sliced cremini mushrooms. Earthy and delicious.

-Sausage with ricotta. This is a crowd pleaser and, along with the plain cheese, one of the two pizzas I make every time. I cook the sausage through in a frying pan first, then rest them in the fridge in a bunch of paper towels to 1) remove the grease and 2) ensure no one gets raw pork. I wrap the ricotta in cheesecloth and suspend it over a bowl in the fridge to drain it. This keeps it from getting watery and gives it a nice brown top.

-I roasted some onion, parsnip, and celery root, then I tossed it in the leftover port and honey sauce from my Christmas party's braised short ribs (sweet and beefy!), then topped with a bit of bacon and some aged cheddar. This was fantastic - the veggies were crisp and rooty, the sauce was lip-smacking and rich - a perfect winter pizza. I overcooked the veggies a bit (forgetting that they were going back in the oven once they got on the pizza), so they were kinda bitter, but overall a fine effort.

-This was my personal favorite because it incorporated some of my favorite flavors. I cooked up some bacon in a frying pan, removed the bacon and fat (reserving the fat for later biscuit efforts), then tossed in some shallots. I deglazed the pan with the liquid leftover from hydrating some porcinis, some red wine, and some balsamic vinegar. I reduced and strained, then brushed it on the crust. I topped it with the porcinis and bacon, cooked, then topped with parmesan and truffle oil. HEAVEN.

-Pepperoni and ricotta. I used to not care for pepperoni pizza because of how orange and greasy the pie would get. Now what I do is layer the pepperoni in paper towels and microwave them for about a minute before topping the pizza. Pure pepperoni perfection!

You'll notice that most of the pies are garnished with herbs. This is as much for presentation as for flavor, and I'm sure to add them AFTER the pizzas come out of the oven to prevent them from losing flavor and going dry. The mix is of fresh sage, fresh basil, a touch of fresh rosemary, and some dried oregano.

This also marks the first time I replaced half of my bread flour with semolina (from Wegman's). WOW. It made an amazing difference in the texture and flavor of the crust, and I will never, EVER go back to using just bread flour. One note, though... I'm not sure if the semolina absorbed more milk or what, but the final dough ended up being a bit drier than usual, so if you want to try semolina as well, be sure to add more liquid accordingly.

All in all, my best effort thanks to:

1) Semolina
2) Herb topping
3) Homemade tomato sauce
4) Topping tech

Made a huge batch of dough this morning in preparation for the Super Bowl tomorrow. I decided to use Reinhart's excellent recipe that calls for making the dough with cold water and a long raise in the fridge. It is a great recipe because it is simple and produces excellent results.

14 oz APF or Bread Flour
1 tsp yeast
1.75 tsp salt
14 oz. of water that is chilled to 40F

Mix everything together and knead in the mixer for 5-7 minutes, after which the dough should be 50-55F. Take out, flour lightly and let it rest in the fridge overnight. You can portion it up now or after the rest.

What kind?

Don't you find that your dough tears really easily after only 5-7 minutes of kneading? How do you stretch/flatten the final product?

I use Red Star active dry yeast, although PR calls for instant yeast. I actually use the active dry the same way as the instant, just put it in and mix it up. If I have any doubt that my yeast is bad I test a small amount before using it, but I rarely ever have yeast sitting around that long.

I have no trouble stretching the dough with only 5-7 minutes of kneading as my mixer is pretty strong. I don't follow the time so much as looking at the dough. My guess is that I probably kneaded it for 9 as I had to adjust the water a bit as my flour was pretty dry. The final result is a smooth and slightly sticky dough. To shape I create a small disk when I first take it out of the fridge to set it warm, then I just slowly stretch it on my wooden cutting board or if I am feeling especially chipper use the back of my hands and tossing.

Anyone have any unique or creative topping ideas? I'm looking to try something new this weekend, and my internal muse seems to be out to lunch.

Years ago at a restaurant where I worked, there was a "German Pizza" that tasted fantastic, but did not sell very well (it was an Italian-themed restaurant so consumers weren't exactly there for German-influenced food, you know?) so it got pulled from the menu after only a month or so. If I remember correctly, it had pretzel salt and was egg-washed on the edges of the crust and was topped with a mustard-based cream sauce, sauerkraut (be sure to wring it out well) and slices of German wurst. I think it may have also been topped with something pickled as well (red onions?). I recall that it was a staff favorite and was fantastic with a few beers!

You sure you don't mean AFTER a few beers?

Okay, I'm looking for some brainstorms here.

Take a look at these four pies from Bebo, Red Rocks, Comet, and 2 Amys:

http://dcist.com/2007/09/18/the_fab_forno_f.php

Then take a look at my pies up above.

The professional pizzas appear to be white with dots of black. My pizzas appear to be more of a gold color.

Why do you think this is?

Theories:

1) My dough uses sugar, but maybe theirs do not (thus less carmelization)?
2) My dough uses olive oil, which is yellowish, but maybe theirs do not?
3) The ovens at the restaurants at hotter than mine (a given, but does it explain the difference)?
4) I use semolina flour (which is yellow) in addition to white bread flour, but maybe they don't?
5) Other?

It looks like the professional pies are lighter, fluffier, crisper.

Thoughts?

Bacon cheeseburger pizza
Pizza margherita

Yum.

I tried upping the liquid in my dough recipe to compensate for the increased absorbative powers of the semolina, but by way too much. I'd say 3/4 cups plus 1-2 tbl of milk should be about right.

The margherita was made with wonderful moz I got from Wegman's and tons of homemade basil oil. The tomatoes and moz were both dried thoroughly in paper towels before going on the pie ('cause you don't want wet pizza).

The bacon cheeseburger pizza was something special. Tomato sauce, lots of thick-cut bacon, ground beef, moz, aged cheddar, and the onions. Hoo boy the onions. I sauteed them in the frying pan I'd used to cook sausage, beef, and bacon, so the onions absorbed the fat and browned bits of each type of meat. They were sublime.

The margherita was sliced and mauled before I could take a picture.

It may be several factors, but mainly I believe it's the heat-you just can't get the same blister effect at 500 degrees as you can at 700+ degrees.
My pizza is also golden on the bottom and gets no blister

That's gorgeous. How do you do your dough? What's your recipe?

That was a little while ago, and I believe it was dough from Vace (truly, I bow to your pizza skillz)

Dan, I would try stretching the dough a little thinner and adding less of the toppings. I can get a little char on mine using a crappy little oven cranked up all the way, but we stretch out the crust, and top them sparingly.

Cook the pizza on the Gas Grill Outside. Either directly on the grates or heat a stone in there for 20 minutes before cooking on the stone.

I've never gotten good results on the grill. You lose way too much heat no matter how quickly you open the lid. Basically you end up with a charred bottom and an undercooked top. The only way around this is to flip the pizza like you would anything else on the grill, but even doing that it's nigh impossible to get your toppings properly caramelized, regardless of how light you go on 'em.

I've been reading good things about these
http://www.2stonepizzagrill.com/
You can see the video on youtube, just do a search for 2stone.

You're supposed to flip grilled pizza...can't be made any other way. Because the critical step is apparently to top lightly and very quickly after the flip, so the residual heat from the first-baked side contributes to cooking the toppings. Haven't experimented with it myself, as it's one of the few things the TEC grill doesn't do well, and I haven't the patience to fire up the charcoal kettle most of the time.

Exactly. But, again, no matter how light you go on the toppings - they'll COOK via conduction from the dough and limited convection from the air, but to cook them WELL you really need radiation and hot air flow for proper caramelization.

Wow. That two-stone pizza grill may very well be what I've been looking for all this time. $257 is a bit much, though - I bet I can build something even better.

When making a grilled pizza all the topping should be cooked before putting them on top. Grill one side, flip, top and either finish in the grill or the oven. Grills are just not made for creating the perfect pie unless you are willing to make some modifications.

It occurred to me that Dan might be talking about using his grill with a stone, in which case my comments don't apply. "Grilled pizza" typically refers to that style in which the dough is placed directly on the grate and exposed to the coals or radiant source below. Using a covered grill as a high-temp oven is something else entirely.

So, apologies if I jumped the gun.

I've tried both. I'm actually really excited to try building my own little two-stone apparatus.

Although, really, I just have to wait until I'm wealthy enough to live somewhere I can build my own brick oven.

Here's some pizza crust ideas from Asia

I think I took some bad acid...

Hammacher Schlemmer recently introduced a $250 home countertop pizza oven (actually, dual ovens) which claims a max temperature of 425C, or nearly 800F. Presumably, it requires a long preheat cycle, but so would any standalone pizza stone. No info on electrical requirements. Intriguing (and I wonder how how the countertop gets...)

It says "plugs into AC", which could be misleading, as your washer/dryer does too, just 240V AC!

Makes small pies though - internal dimensions of the oven are just 12".

I'm lazy and don't plan ahead when making pizza so buying fresh dough from the Italian Store has always been my solution for making pizza at home. However, having just paid $3.99 for an extra large ball of dough (double the old price!), I think my streak of laziness has ended.

Here is some video of my favorite Pizzaiolo. One of the clips is how to make pizza at home. Check it out!
Integrity is special.
"It's not done any way but with love, and a little bit of anger.."

http://www.chow.com/stories/11065

This past weekend:

-Plain cheese
-Sausage and ricotta
-Pepperoni and ricotta
-Porcini, bacon, parmesan and balsamic
-Herb roasted chicken, spinach, and cheddar
-Bacon cheeseburger*

*Ever get boardwalk fries at the Jersey shore when there are seagulls nearby? That's what it was like with my guests with this one.

I made four different batches of dough:

1) Semolina and King Arthur 00 with cold ferment
2) King Arthur 00 with cold ferment
3) Semolina and King Arthur 00 with initial rise followed by cold ferment
4) King Arthur 00 with initial rise followed by cold ferment

Got the best results from #3, so I'll be tweaking my recipe to include half semolina and half 00. I still can't seem to get the ratio of liquid right, though. I really need a kitchen scale - going by volume here sucks.

I also experimented with turning my pizza dough into bread. The flavor and texture was absolutely AMAZING... in the parts that were cooked properly. Cooking it at the same temperature I cook the pizzas at was not so amazing (black outside, raw inside).

I will be making a few pizze in the early afternoon tomorrow, in Sterling at the World cup Polo game, (Italy vs. USA). I made some dough today with a couple different kinds of flour, (alla palla, for crispy, and alla napoletana 00) Not my favorite flour and the conditions for the mixing were less than stellar. Will be using a gas fired oven that should really be burning wood. Anyway, it should be interesting. If it's not totally a disaster and frustrating, it should be fun.

If you are at the match, come on by and say, "Hi"

What ratio of semolina to KA are you using?

As for the bread there is a recipe in The Italian Baker for Pane Siciliano that uses a ratio of 2.5 cups semolina to 1 cup AP. It can be shaped into a Mafalda, Occhi di Santa Lucia, or a Corona and baked on a stone at 425F for 10 minutes and then 400F for 20-30 minutes longer. It is damn good bread that is pretty easy to make.

Half and half. The recipe itself I love, I just needed a lower cooking time

Williams Sonoma Beehive pizza oven. Just a little pricey.

I bet you could convert a Weber kettle into a pizza oven for 1/20th the price.