General blather

Pizza Success!

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So I had another go at making pizza – my baking challenge for this year. Last month’s effort was a big fail – the pizzas stuck to the new pans I had bought and the crust did not taste good at all. So this month, I rolled it back a little.

I went back to my old standard pizza crust recipe, which is from a dorky little pizza cookbook I bought in the late 1990s, called Pizza Pizzazz: Basic to Gourmet. The only change I made to the recipe was trading out half of the all-purpose flour for 00 pizza flour. Before I baked the real pizzas I took a little of the dough and made mini-pizza to test out two methods for keeping them from sticking. I baked one on parchment paper on the pan and for the other I lightly oiled the pan. Both methods worked great! Which is nice – I have options. I figured out my timing by keeping a really close watch on them and noted the times – 10 minutes of baking for just the crusts, then put on the sauce and cheese and toppings, and 5 minutes more. And they came out just great!

There were three – the other two were gone before I could get my phone out. As you can see, I don’t do great making them round, but I am OK with them a little blobby. Maybe that is something I will work toward. Maybe not. We shall see.

I also made a cheesecake at DH’s request. He wanted one with a blueberry swirl. So I made just the regular Philly three step cheesecake and marbled in some blueberry pie filling. It too turned out pretty well! I did do a variation here too – I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese. I have found there isn’t a lot of different between full fat and 1/3 less, but if you go lower fat than that it starts tasting weird.

This likewise was half gone before I remembered to take a picture. Anyway. It was minimal fuss and tasted good.

Do you have a favorite kind of pizza to bake or just to eat? Do tell!

15 thoughts on “Pizza Success!”

  2. At the beginning of the pandemic, I made a lot of home made pizzas. I have a crust recipe that is easy and works. I would often double the recipe and freeze the crusts without topping it. That worked too. Now if I make a pizza, I usually use a naan crust rather than from scratch.

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  4. I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a sourdough pizza dough that is my go-to crust. However, this week I’m going to cheat and get a pre-made dough from the store, because I want to make a pizza without spending quite as much time on the rise. I’m also going to be trying a new topping—garlic cheese pizza—instead of my usual red sauce + some kind of meat.

    For the pan, I always lightly oil my pizza pan before putting the crust down. At one point I tried using semolina flour to make it not stick (didn’t work) and I’ve had parchment paper start to brown at the high pizza temps (I get paranoid), so I’ve decided to stick with an oiled pan.

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