The Great Homemade Pizza Making Experiment: Take 1
Monday, July 6, 2009 at 9:25AM 
I've always wanted to make my own homemade pizza. I've also always found ways to put it off. Recently, I received a beautiful pizza stone as a gift and decided that the universe had finally said, give it up already, woman, and make your pizza!
So, armed with Whole Foods organic whole wheat pizza dough, I rolled out a great little pie and topped it with all local ingredients - local tomato puree that we received as part of our winter CSA last year, local mozzarella that I picked up at the Fulton Stall Market, fresh pecorino-style cheese from Valley Shepherd at the Borough Hall Farmers' Market, and garlic scapes, also from Borough Hall Farmers' Market.
I was aware of the issue one might have getting your topped uncooked pizza from the counter into the oven. I had thought through this issue and somehow, when the time came, I decided that I would wing it. I made a makeshift pizza peel out of cardboard, using copious amounts of flour to keep my dough from sticking. I didn't realize, however, exactly how long it would take to get my oven up to the requisite 500F, and so my little pizza sat on its little peel while the whole kitchen warmed up, softening the dough and rendering my flour useless.
In short, the pizza turned into a goopy mess and I hadn't even gotten close to the oven. I managed to slide the pizza onto a baking pan (apparently, I don't have a real cookie sheet with no edges) and force it into a vaguely-pizza shape. It was not so pretty.
Even though I did not win points for beauty, the pizza did come out tasting great. The dough was a little chewier than I would have liked considering the stone, but the toppings were the stars and the cheesy, gooey, garlicky mess made for a lovely dinner, even if it was a near-disaster.
To enjoy my pizza even more, I pulled out the 2007 Sobon Amador County Hillside Zinfandel which I picked up at Astor Wines. This is a fabulous weeknight zin that worked beautifully with the pizza. The dark fruit flavors took some time to open up, but once I'd gotten a chance to get into the wine, the fruit complemented the cheesy kick of the pizza and was very enjoyable. I definitely recommend this wine.
Farmers Market: mozzarella, pecorino-style cheese, garlic scapes
Winter CSA: tomato puree
Pantry Items: olive oil, red pepper flakes
Non-local items: pizza dough (from Whole Foods, ingredient origins unknown)
Reader Comments (5)
Oh, no. Parchment paper, works great. You can slide it out after it bakes for 10 minutes or just leave it in, I always do and it turns out fine!
Also, make your own dough!! It's SO easy and so much tastier.
Here's an easy recipe:
3.5-4 cups flour
1 package yeast
2 TBSP EVOO
Salt to taste
1 cup water btwn 105-115 (no hotter, it will kill the yeast!)
Warm your oven to 200 with the bowl you'll use to make the dough in there.
Heat the water, add to bowl. Add yeast to make sure it is active.
Add EVOO and salt to taste (usuallly about 1 tsp).
Add about 2.5 C flour. Mix on speed 2 of your mixer. Add flour .5 C at a time until dough balls and is no longer sticky to the touch.
Douse sides of a bowl with EVOO, put dough in. Cover with saran and put in the 200 degree oven for about an hour or until double in bulk.
Roll out on parchment paper treated with EVOO and corn startch, add toppings, and bake at 450 for 20ish minutes until cheese starts to brown.
PS-your comment thing is hard to use...any way to add the Name/URL option to the choices...it keeps telling me I don't own any of the IDs I do own...
Thanks for the tips - I'm definitely going the parchment paper route next time.
I'm not sure if I fixed the comment function, but I did change the settings to try and make it easier.
And I'm all for making my own dough - I'll give your recipe a shot!
We make pizza every Friday and the parchment paper idea is a great tip - that's what we use. We also make our own crust. When we make it, we make a double batch and freeze the extra. It keeps in the freezer for a month or two.