Pizza the Dustin way

I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride in homemade pizza. I've got a dough recipe I like and I can finally cook them so the crust is cooked all the way before the toppings burn. Here's the latest two from last night, and details below on how I made 'em.

Broccoli and mushrooms



Nice puffy crust



Crust cooked all the way.



'white' pizza (mozarella, olive oil, garlic oil, basil)





Oh yeah - Dizzy Pig's Mediterranean-ish seasoning - put some of that stuff on your pizza, adds some nice flavor, but more importantly it makes the whole house smell amazing. They should just call it Pizza-ish.

Dough recipe:

333g of '00' style flour
233g of water
10g fine sea salt
~1/4 tsp yeast

Stir together water, salt, and yeast until everything is dissolved. Mix with flour just enough to incorporate all the flour, cover and let it sit for 30mins to an hour. Kneed the dough for about two minutes, shape into a ball, cover and let it sit for another two-ish hours. Divide dough in two, and shape each half into a ball and put them each into an oiled bowl. Cover, let sit for another hour or so. At this point the dough should have spent about 4hrs on the counter at room temp. Put the bowls with the dough balls into the fridge.

I mix the dough the night before we make pizza, so my dough balls sit in the fridge for ~20hrs or so. I don't think this time is all that critical, you could likely let them hang out in the fridge until the next night with little to no downside. I haven't tried that yet though. If you don't have 4hrs to do the mixing and initial rise/proofing, you can use more yeast and/or use warmer water when you mix the dough to speed up the process.

Take the bowls out of the fridge and let them sit at room temp for about two hours before you shape/top/bake them. Each ball will make a ~12" pie.

I bake mine at 550*F in the oven on a baking steel. The steel is the key - it transfers heat much faster than a pizza stone, so it cooks the crust faster. With a stone my toppings were burning before I got the crust cooked as well as I wanted.

If you're cooking on a grill you can get the temperature higher, and the stone will likely work. I used to cook pizzas on my Egg until it cracked, haven't tried it on the Weber yet. But the steel + home oven works so well I'm just not sure it's worth the hassle of dealing with the grill.

I 'build' the pies on a piece of parchment paper, trim it to fit the shape of the pie other than a 'handle' sticking out, and load them into the oven on the paper. Just makes it much easier and less messy than trying to use flour/cornmeal/etc to keep the dough from sticking to the peel. After about 4/5mins I pull the paper out (using tongs to grab that handle) and let the pie finish up. They bake in about 8mins or so.

Next up I want to try and make some pizza dough using my sourdough starter.

brbaker said:

Just curious, have you pre-heated the stones in the oven before you cooked the pizza. I'm not really well versed in pizza cooking (but would like to be) so I appreciate your thoughts.

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Oh yeah. Forgot to mention that, but any time you're cooking pizza (stone or steel) you want it HOT. I turn the oven on about an hour before the first pie goes in.

The dough needs that instant heat to give it some oven spring for that light and poofy open crumb crust.

When using the stone I cooked at the same temp, but since it doesn't transfer heat as quickly it didn't cook the bottom of the crust as much as I'd like.

I've baked bread on my pizza stone, and that works fine. I tried it once on the baking steel - total fail. The bottom was BURNT. Smelled like fire when I opened the oven. Pizzas cook in less than 10 minutes, but a loaf of bread takes ~45mins. That long on of the faster heat transferring steel = burnt.

Here's a pie cooked on a pizza stone (a nice thick Big Green Egg stone). Note how much of the cheese is well browned (almost burnt, all that dark brown stuff - there's no sausage haha), yet the bottom is barely getting some color - and this was the best I ever got with the stone.





Meanwhile, with the steel: Cheese is melted, a few brown bits here and there, and the bottom is well spotted and firm.

ChEgrad said:

Those look great. Very close to how I cook my pizza. I cook on a steel at 550 also. I use AP flour, not 00. Need to find a local source for 00. I use a 3-day ferment in the refrigerator for the dough.

The baking steels are not inexpensive, so I was hesitant to buy one. Luckily, my brother-in-law has a friend who owns a fabrication shop. He gave his friend some ducks he shot, my wife gave her brother a white chocolate bread pudding, and I got a 3/8" thick rectangle of steel. The barter system is alive and well

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They are expensive if you buy the name brand version for sure. A co-worker of mine owns Grill Master Grills and builds customer grills and smokers, so he's got plenty of plate laying around and he cut me a piece of 1/4" plate for only $20. I seasoned it myself.