Achieving moderate pizza success

What you already know:

• I've tried making pizza and have failed.
• I do not own a pizza stone.
• I do own a pizza screen. I will throw a frozen pizza on there for oven heating.
• I do not [yet] own a cast iron skillet.

Well I gave it another try this week. Different approach. A bit of Googling beforehand. Here are the results




Yeah, not bad. Passable. Here's what I did.

Trader Joe's crust. The original. Don't fuck with the herbs one--everyone on the food chats agree it's not as good. And you could get the wheat one, but why? Seriously. Save that healthy stuff for another night.

Take the the dough out of the fridge and put it on your counter. Let it get closer to room temp. About twenty minutes or so. Leave it in the plastic wrap.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

While the oven's warming up, cut the bag open and start removing the dough.

This time I used a dark cookie sheet. Not the light ones, and definitely not the "air-bake" styled one that I used in the past. This is very important. Through the magic of Google, I learned that those are strictly for cookies and they are made to prevent over-browning. We want the opposite for pizza. We want our crust to get crisp. Seems like something I should have known from the get go. Oh well. Live and learn.

I lightly oiled the cookie sheet. How: I used grapeseed oil because it was handy. I poured a small bit out and used a small piece of wadded paper towel to spread it around.

I have a rolling pin but wasn't in the mood to find it. I used my clean hands to work the dough into two rounds on the oiled cookie sheet. It didn't look pretty. That is, it wasn't perfectly circular. That seemed less important than getting the dough down as thin as possible. It puffs up, don't worry. Get it really thin. Some people report being able to make 2 or even 3, 12" pizzas from one package of TJ's dough, so use that information as a guide. Pop the pizza bases on the oiled sheet into your preheated oven.

Let it puff up. I didn't time it but I quickly sliced pre-washed zucchini into thin slices using a mandoline. I also chopped up a few handfuls of mushrooms. So figure somewhere between 5-10 minutes. Look in the oven window. Is it a little poofed? Take them out of the oven.

Now I had the dough looking less glossy but still somewhat shiny. Rather than a bottled pizza sauce as per usual, I spread many spoonfuls of pesto sauce over the pizza bases. Probably too much. They say Americans tend to oversauce. I know I do. Oh well. At least this time it's mostly olive oil and not water based.

Top with vegetables. Very light sprinkle of garlic salt is very optional. I just do it when I use a shit ton of vegetables. I say very light sprinkle because salt will draw out every bit of moisture of those fresh vegetables and the dough will soak it up. You don't want that. Use a light hand if at all.

Back in the oven. I omitted cheese.

Again, I didn't time it. I'm lucky to have access to an oven with a built-in light. I took peeks through the oven window. I heard the sizzle of oil--don't be alarmed--of the dough sort of frying on the sheet. It's going to be okay.

When the dough started looking more like bread and began taking on a more golden look, I removed the pizza. The smaller one was good to go but the larger one was a little doughy. I transfered that one to the pizza screen and popped it back in for less than 5 minutes additional baking time.

Okay you're done. Take everything out of the oven. I made quadruple sure the oven was turned off (mild OCD).

I topped things off with a very light sprinkle of grana padano. (If anyone wants to buy me a Microplane, the classic one will do, thanks). I let that sit for a moment then use a good size rubber spatula to move one of the pizzas to a cutting board. Feel the satisfying crunch when you cut one apart.

Enjoy.

Additional notes:

If I'd invested more time in choosing ingredients, I might have liked to add some halved, pitted kalamata olives. Maybe even some roasted red pepper.

I'm really over margherita-type combinations of ingredients. Maybe you could try some thin slices of potato, carmelized onion and some tangy gorgonzola. Maybe even some pear. Get a mandoline--thin slicing is better with one. I have a cheap/fake one from a Japanese discount store. It has a fixed blade and a little insert for even thinner slicing. Cost less than $4. Just be careful when you wash it. It's still sharp as hell and we want to keep it that way.

You could go with the done-to-death CPK sort of bbq chicken. People love that.

Can't think of any more right now. Maybe you have some ideas to share. Do it in the comments. Thanks.