Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Tuesday, February 5. 2019

Home-made pizza party

The problem with home-made pizza is that an oven does not have the hot surface or heat of a wood-fired or commercial pizza oven. That's why we usually pre-cook the crust before cooking again with the toppings. 500 degrees or close is oven pizza temperature. Also, pre-heat the darn oven.


Wood-fired and commercial pizza ovens reach 800-1000 degrees F. These comments are interesting:  Can an oven be too hot for Pizza?


Pizza dough is easy to make, or to buy fresh pizza dough balls at your market. My preference is a thin, cracker-like crust with burn marks on the bottom. 


Our current favorite topping is rather effete, but don't knock it if you haven't tried it:  Olive oil, Goat cheese, arugula or dandelion, sliced fresh figs, and sprinkled with pignoli and then with some ground pepper. Best to wilt the bed of arugula in some oil for a minute first.

Posted by The News Junkie in Food and Drink at 15:09 | Comments (17) | Trackbacks (0)

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PLEASE PROVIDE THE RECIPE for *your* ideal pizza dough!
"easy to make"....okay...waiting...! (thanks)
#1 Kauf Buch on 2019-02-05 15:18 (Reply)
Cook the crust on your gas grill and then put the toppings on... hit it under the broiler for a minute or two. Grilling the crust gives you that "cracker" crust. And more flavor than if you just bake it in the oven.
#2 JC on 2019-02-05 15:40 (Reply)
Yep. We use our Weber charcoal grill. Put a stone/ceramic pizza pan on the grill plate, preferably as the grill is heating up (so it doesn't heat up too fast and crack). You can slide your newly made pizza on the stone, close the lid, and have fantastic oven-fired pizza in under 3 minutes. Crispy crust, just like Napoli! Here's a link:

https://www.weber.com/US/en/blog/tips-techniques/using-a-pizza-stone/weber-31074.html
#2.1 Bull on 2019-02-06 03:27 (Reply)
The problem with home-made pizza is that an oven does not have the hot surface or heat of a wood-fired or commercial pizza oven. That's why we usually pre-cook the crust before cooking again with the toppings. 500 degrees or close is oven pizza temperature..

What I do is cook the toppings- not cheese- separately.
I roll out bread dough and heat it it in a skillet. When the flat bread dough is nearly cooked, I add the topping, and then add the cheese to the flat dough cooking in the skillet. Of course, I flip the dough so it cooks on both sides.

Pizza without the oven. Or, flat bread without the oven.
#3 Gringo on 2019-02-05 16:34 (Reply)
Great pizza story here but can't get past the spam filter...
#4 The Distributist (Link) on 2019-02-05 16:58 (Reply)
try again - our filter is a pain
#4.1 Bird Dog on 2019-02-05 18:04 (Reply)
I've yet to find an easy, suitable dough recipe to make at home. Because of the need to fully form the gluten strands, in order to avoid having to support the finished slice with a fork [a surefire way to insult a pizza chef!] requires a great deal of kneading, and a couple of risings. It's as easy to make 2 pizzas as it is to make 20 pizzas, in my experience. I always buy pre-made dough, and there are some good ones emerging on the store shelves made with beer, WW, herbs.

If you're going for gluten free pizza, please, order the soup.

A pizza needs to be baked on a stone surface, 500 degrees is good. Lacking a stone, I crisp the crust by placing the pizza on a flat pizza pan on the middle rack for the first 5-7 minutes or so. Be sure and set another rack on the bottom, right near the heat source, especially in an electric oven. Once the dough has risen enough to hold the ingredients on its own, I remove the pan, and place the pizza directly on the lowest rack for the duration of the baking. 7 more minutes maybe.
#5 anon on 2019-02-05 17:11 (Reply)
Use a bread machine on the dough cycle to get good results for the dough. Use very fresh yeast and flour. Line your middle oven rack with unglazed quarry tiles (get a few cut in half) and preheat the oven at full blast for up to an hour. I roll my very thin dough rounds onto parchment and slide them onto a cookie sheet and then easily into the oven. Prebake these rounds for five minutes after brushing with olive oil. Take 'em out and top with ingredients, and bake again till done. I can crank my oven to near 600 degrees after fiddling around with the thermostat settings. Not recommended, but I watch it like a hawk. I get consistently good pizza using this procedure.
#6 Missy on 2019-02-05 17:34 (Reply)
Cut the lock off your oven door and cook your pizza on the self cleaning cycle. Your bog standard oven will be plenty hot enough.
#7 Mike (Link) on 2019-02-05 18:51 (Reply)
ol’boy I know up on the Susquehanna by Penn’s Tavern, built a stone, wood fired oven in his backyard . Quite the bread enthusiast he is, but he'll also knock out a superb, very thin, scratch pizza with seasonal vegetables and Asiago, so savory .
#8 la on 2019-02-05 21:05 (Reply)
Trader Joe's has pretty good pre-made pizza dough for those impromptu pizza nights. Lots of semi-browned hot Italians sausage and carmelized onions. Yum.
#9 S.Lynn on 2019-02-06 00:14 (Reply)
In 1980 I was in a remote camp -14000 ft- in the Andes in Peru. We were starved for some "home" food and asked the cook for pizza. She had never heard of it. She was adept at making bread so we convinced her to make her usual bread and roll it out to resemble a pizza crust. We put what we had-tomato sauce and tomato, sausage, cheese, and some Peruvian peppers- and that was it. That and a couple of beers and we thought we were in heaven. Over the next six weeks we had pizza at least once a week,some interesting toppings, but beer makes everything ok.
#10 rocdoctom on 2019-02-06 00:18 (Reply)
Heresy to some, but the absolute best thin, chewy, low-carb pizza crust:

Genius Kitchen Low Carb Pork Rind Pizza Crust

You can make it thick too but I like thin.
#11 CapitalistRoader on 2019-02-06 11:28 (Reply)
I bought a used Bessemer converter on eBay from a shut-down steel mill with the intention of making it into a pizza oven. We'll see if there is such a thing as too hot!
#12 SteveS on 2019-02-06 14:50 (Reply)
You can make a really good pizza with a gas grill. It helps to have one where the burners run front to back: You leave one outside burner off, cover that half of the grill with foil, turn the others up full blast and let that sucker get to 600-700 F or so. Slide your loaded dough onto the foil side with a peel and wait 5 or 6 minutes, rotate it half way around, and roast it a few minutes more. This is all done with the cover down, of course.

The crust is toasty, the toppings are sizzling hot (I like sauteed spinach, fresh sliced tomatos, and sliced whole milk mozzarella). It's hard to go wrong topping-wise, although I'd avoid the strawberries and octopus they sometimes use in Japan.

Probably a good idea to make sure your grill isn't wanting a cleaning of the grease pan on the bottom, those temperatures can lead to a fire at an inconvenient moment. Don't ask me how I know.

It is ethical to enjoy a good zinfandel or Tuscan red with this meal.
#13 Phidippus on 2019-02-06 17:13 (Reply)
1. Remove box from freezer.
2. Remove still frozen pizza from the box, along with any wrappings.
3. Add additional toppings if desired. Place in preheated oven. Bake for time listed on the box.
4. Remove from oven, cut with pizza cutter, consume.

Or alternately,
1. Call take-out pizza place, order pizza.
2. Remove appropriate quantity of cash from wallet, place on table by front door.
3. Wait for delivery driver.
4. When they arrive, pay and take what they give you to the kitchen counter.
5. Tell everyone: "Hey, the pizza is here."
#14 Pod Hamp on 2019-02-06 17:23 (Reply)
Pizza is inexpensive, whether you make it yourself or buy it. I have done both.

When I was in charge of getting snacks for a monthly meeting, I usually purchased Little Caeasar's cheese pizzas- which went up from $4 to $5 during the time I was purchasing pizza.

Pizza is deeply embedded into US food these days. Yet before the 1950s, my parents from flyover country had never eaten pizza.Their first pizza came when they moved to New England. A friend of Italian origin came to visit with her husband- she spoke only Italian until she went to school- and brought a homemade pizza.
#14.1 Gringo on 2019-02-06 19:34 (Reply)

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