You know that line from Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on?” Well, if pizza be the food of love, and I’d say that it’s a pretty good candidate, given that making homemade pizza for one’s beloved when one doesn’t even eat a bite oneself ought to be a potent love charm, then we need to play it again, only with a different recipe.
I used this recipe for Super Crispy Thin Crust Pizza, because Shel likes thin crusts and I’ve always preferred a thicker crust, so I didn’t have a tried and true thin crust recipe. This one is simplissimo, no rising, even though it’s a yeast dough, barely any kneading. The dough rolled out super-thin like a dream – those speckles are Italian herbs, which are included in the dough. Then the recipe has you bake it for a few minutes before adding the toppings.
Ack! Evidently the dough needed to be docked before baking, although the recipe doesn’t mention this. Come to think of it, this might be my new pita dough recipe, minus the speckles. In all of my attempts to get pita to puff properly I’ve never had such spectacular puffing as this pizza presented. I had to poke a few little holes in it to deflate it.
Then the recipe has you assemble the pizza upside-down, with the pepperoni first, the cheese next, then the sauce. This is supposed to keep the sauce from sogging into the crust, and it seemed sensible to me. However, Shel complained that the texture was off, having the sauce on top. And he also complained that a) it wasn’t crispy enough, and b) the two separate layers of now-deflated crust made for very weird eating. As to crispiness, I baked it directly on my pizza stone at 500°, and the stone had been heating at temperature for 45 minutes. I don’t think there was any way I could have gotten the dough hotter, and indeed, it cooked in just under 10 minutes total. I wish I could say that it wasn’t perfect but it was still very good, but alas, the uneaten half went into the garbage instead of the fridge, so that pretty much says it all.
So please, if you know the secret to making a truly crispy-crusted pizza in a home oven, do tell. You’ll be doing love a great service.