Lessons Learned Making Pizza

If you’ve read my about page, you’ll know that I am a home chef in the making, and I always will be.  As humans, we are always learning and evolving. One of the main purposes of this website is to act as a knowledgebase of lessons learned along the way.  The beauty of publishing to the web is that you can easily update and revise earlier posts to reflect newfound wisdom.  This is something you just can’t do with books, newspapers or magazines, but the web, like people, is a living thing that is constantly changing and evolving.

Last February, I posted this piece on making pizza margherita, and since then, I’ve been making a lot of pizzas in an attempt to further refine my techniques.  I want to get to a level at which I can consistently create a great pizza every time with minimal hassle. I’ve been trying new techniques and refining old ones, and I’ve learned a thing or two. So this week, I revised that old post to reflect some of these lessons learned.  Here they are:

Keeping Your Pizza Stone Clean

If you want to make great pizza at home, you really need a pizza stone. The quality of your homemade pizza will increase tenfold. Pizza stones replicate the floor of a professional pizza oven and help the dough cook faster and crisper.  They’re fairly inexpensive and easy to care for.  All you need to do is clean them every once in a while.  I used to clean mine by scrapping off baked-on debris with a putty knife and rinsing the stone with water.  I’ve since learned that a wire brush does a much better job. You can pick one up at your local hardware store for a nominal cost, or, if you have a grill brush, that will do just fine. Wipe any loosened debris with a damp rag or rinse with water.  Never use soap or detergent on a pizza stone.

Getting the Pizza into the Oven

If you’re not familiar with a pizza peel, it is essential a large spatula used to move a pizza into and out of a hot oven. Using one takes some practice. Do you remember that old trick whereby someone would pull a table cloth out from under a fully set table, and the dishes would all stay in place?  Well, moving a pizza off of a peel and onto a stone is a little like that. You need to thrust the pie forward and then quickly snap the peel out from under it. My greatest pizza frustration is when the pie sticks to the peel and refuses to slide onto the stone. It is the bane of my pizza making existence. By the time I finally coerce the darn thing off with a spatula and some harsh language, the pie invariably looks deformed and the toppings resemble a mudslide. 

For years, I used a wooden pizza peel, and from time to time a pie would stick, but when I switched to a metal peel, it seemed like every other pizza would become one with the peel. This is because a metal peel is non-porous, and no amount of dusting will help.  There is simply nothing to hold the flour in place. This is a shame, because metal peels are more flexible and durable than wooden ones.  Checking the underside of a pizza for doneness and getting a pie out of the oven is actually easier with a thin metal peel, but at what cost?  I had ruined so many pizzas that I was about ready to go back to a wooden peel.  That’s when I learned these little tricks.

First, make certain your peel is completely dry. Before you assemble your toppings, thoroughly dust one side of your dough with semolina or flour and brush off any excess with your hand. Flip the pie over onto the peel so that the dusted side is face down. Using small circular motions, move your peel around.  The dough should move freely. If  it doesn’t, dust the bottom again. Position the pie on the front edge of the peel, and assemble your toppings.

When you’re ready to put your pizza onto the stone, if it sticks, let the peel rest on the hot stone for about 5-10 seconds. The heat will transfer through the metal and warm the underside of the crust causing it to release, and your pizza should slide right off.  Hallelujah!

Frying Pan Method

If I haven’t convinced you that a pizza stone is worth owning, and you only wish to make a small personal-sized pie, you might be interested in this method that Joe Yonan demonstrated for me last spring. It requires a 10-12 inch cast iron skillet that you heat over a medium flame for 15 minutes.  When the pan is literally smoking hot, you invert it with a couple of heavy duty kitchen mitts and place it onto an oven rack positioned about 5 inches from your ovens broiler. You quickly assemble the pie on top of the upside down pan, close the oven, and in as little as three minutes, you have a perfectly cooked pie with a nice crispy crust.  It may sound unusual, but it works.

Dough Management 101

The secret to getting a nice round even crust is kneading. Too often, I would under knead, fearing the dough would get too glutinous. As it turns out, this is exactly what you want in a pizza dough.  Kneading develops the gluten in dough, and that makes for more chewy crust. Do don’t underestimate the need for kneading. If the dough retracts as you try to form a pie or tears easily, knead it. The dough should be supple and elastic. 

I used to form my pies by hand. I suppose it made me feel like a professional tossing the dough in the air.  I never got good enough to spin it above my head like they do in the movies or on TV.  I’m not even certain anyone really does that.  I rarely ended up with a perfectly round pie, and too often, I would have thick spots and thin ones.  This is not so bad for larger pies. Odd shapes and large dough bubbles can add character but what I’ve learned is that for a thin, even crust and a nice round pie, a good old fashioned rolling pin works just fine. Just make sure the pin and your works surface are well floured. Roll the dough out in rotating manner working out from the center, and check often to make certain it doesn’t stick to the work surface. It may not look as impressive as throwing it over your head, but it has consistent results.

Using a Grill

I prefer to make my pizzas in the oven, but using a grill has become a popular alternative. The advantage of a gas grill is that it gets much hotter than a standard kitchen oven. My gas Weber model reaches temperatures in excess of 700°F.  That can cook a small personal pizza in less than two minutes – just like a professional wood burning pizza oven. So I was anxious to try it out.

I found a pizza stone at Sur La Table that was precisely the size of my gas grill and gladly plucked down the $59 dollars they were asking.  That was my first mistake.  With a grill, the heat source is beneath the stone. The last thing you want to do is to completely cover the burners. This traps the heat and makes the stone too hot.  My pizza crust blackened before the toppings fully melted. Lowering the temperature actually worked better, but I need a smaller stone. That would allow the heat to get above the pizza and melt the toppings more rapidly.

All was not lost though. The new stone actually fits quite nicely on the floor of my oven and gives me enough cooking surface to cook two personal sized pizzas at the same time. My previous stone, which was round couldn’t do that. So for now, I’ll stick to cooking in the oven, and when I get a smaller stone, I’ll give it another shot.