Thin Crust Pizza

Pizza is often lumped with junk food or fast food. But made from scratch at home, it's slow food. It spends only minutes in the oven, but like any yeast bread, the dough takes time. Plus you can make pizza at home with an eye towards nutritional balance; the nutrition facts (below) might be a pleasant surprise.

I've been making homemade pizza for years. I started by trying to mimic the cracker thin pizza from my favorite pizzerias on the southwest side of Chicago. Making pizza at home is not complicated, but it's a stepwise process that requires some comittment.



You'll want a pizza stone and a pizza peel for best results at home. The stone preheats along with oven and helps produce a crisp crust. The peel, essentially a giant spatula, transfers the pizza onto the hot stone. If you don't have a pizza stone or peel, check out these posts by Michael Ruhlman and Smitten Kitchen for great tips on making pizza at home with ordinary kitchen tools.

Pizza requires a very hot oven, so a clean oven helps reduce smoking. Before I learned how to use the self-clean feature of my oven, my family knew it was pizza night when the smoke alarms sounded.



For me, the trickiest part of pizza making is the transfer from peel to stone. I liberally dust the peel with cornmeal so the pizza slides easily. A test shake to make sure the dough is loose and not sticking to the peel is a tip I learned from this great video from the New York Times. It's a fun demonstration of homemade pizza from start to finish.

Forming the dough requires a bit of finesse, but mostly patience and practice. Some pizza aficionados disdain the use of a rolling pin, claiming it produces a dense crust. But I find it easier to get uniform thickness and a nice round shape with a rolling pin, particularly for thin crust pizza. I just let the rolled dough rest a bit before topping.

Alternately, you can use your hands to stretch the dough to the desired shape. I keep trying to master this stretching technique, but I usually end up with uneven thickness and odd shapes. No matter, the pizza is still good.

If you're new to pizza making, check out these instructional videos from the Chef at Pizzeria Paradiso (a great pizza joint in Washington DC) for a demonstration of shaping pizza dough either by hand or with a rolling pin.

Homemade pizzas are not perfect. But they are delicious, fun and so satisfying. I make pizza more often than any other food, but I'm constantly experimenting in the quest to make it better. In addition to the links above, check out the list of links at the bottom of the post to find inspiration and advice for your own pizza quest.



Homemade Pizza

Although it's possible to start and finish your pizza in the same day, the best pizza takes time. Delayed gratification is a difficult lesson, but well worth it. The flavor of the dough will improve as it rests in the refrigerator for a day or more. I find the same is true about the sauce - just like spaghetti or lasagna taste better the next day.

Basic Pizza Dough

This basic dough makes 2 thin-crust pizzas, or one medium-thick pizza. I use a bread machine to mix, knead, and rise the dough. This is just for convenience, it's not essential. If you don't have a bread machine, please don't let that stop you. I've included several links below with instructions for mixing the dough by hand or with a mixer.

3/4 cup warm water
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 cups bread or all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1. Add the water and oil to the bread pan. Add the flour, sugar, and salt on top of the water & oil. Spread out the top of the dry ingredients. Make a slight depression in the center of the flour and put the yeast there.

2. Secure the bread pan in the machine and close the cover. Select the "Dough" setting and start the machine. When it's done, remove the dough.

3. Divide the dough into 2 portions and shape each portion into a round. Transfer the dough rounds to an oiled and floured Ziploc bag, and store in the refrigerator for one to five days.

Assembling the Pizza

On pizza night, with the dough and sauce done ahead of time, you can focus on the toppings. Keep it simple for the kids with a cheese pizza. Look for a Wisconsin-made mozzarella and shred it yourself. Beyond cheese, anything goes, but use a light hand with the toppings. Cheese & Sausage is a regular at our house, but the Italian sausage needs to be cooked first before it goes on the pizza. Pepperoni is classic and easy. Sauteed mushrooms, onions, or peppers are other good choices.

prepared pizza dough
1/4 cup pizza sauce, more to taste
1 cup freshly shredded mozzarella cheese
other toppings as you desire
extra flour for dusting counter
cornmeal for dusting peel

1. The dough needs to be room temperature before you start shaping, so take it out of the refrigerator several hours before meal time. About an hour before you begin assembling the pizzas, start preheating the oven. Put the pizza stone on the oven rack in the lowest position. Turn the oven to 525 degrees F and let the oven and stone preheat for at least an hour.

2. Once the dough has lost it's chill, punch the 2 dough balls down and reshape each into a round, flattened disc. Sprinkle some flour on your work surface to keep the dough from sticking. Using your hands or a rolling pin, press, stretch or roll the dough into a 12 to 14 inch round. Check frequently that dough is not sticking and sprinkle more flour as needed. Take a break and let the dough rest if it starts to resist or shrink.

3. Sprinkle a handful of cornmeal onto the pizza peel. Transfer one of the dough rounds to the peel. Shake the peel to make sure the dough moves freely and is not sticking to the peel.

4. Spread 1/4 to 1/3 cup pizza sauce (recipe below) on the dough, leaving an inch around the edge free of sauce. Next add (non-cheese) toppings of your choice if desired. Use toppings sparingly though, don't overload the dough.

5. Finish by sprinkling freshly shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup, more to taste) over the sauce and toppings. Again, less is more. At this point, a light sprinkling of Parmesan and/or dried oregano is optional.

6. Slide the pizza from the peel to the stone. You need to get it moving with a firm jerk. Bake the pizza for about 4 to 6 minutes or till done. The pizza is done when the crust is golden brown around the edge and the cheese is browned in spots. Let the pizza cool for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

7. If you're ready with another pizza, you can slide it directly onto the stone. If you're not ready with the next pizza or if you want the stone to heat up some more, carefully brush residual cornmeal off the stone. Otherwise it will start to burn and smoke as the stone heats up awaiting the next pizza.

Troubleshooting Homemade Pizza

• You may need to make adjustments to the oven temperature or placement of pizza stone and oven rack to optimize the pizza. In my experience, the cheese has a tendency to be done before the crust is crispy enough. In that case, I cover the cheese with a bit of foil for the final minute(s).

• The other issue is blistering in the dough as it cooks. Small to medium sized blisters are desirable and delicious. But sometimes (not always) enormous blisters form. My strategies for dealing with blisters have run from poking holes in the raw dough with a fork before topping to ignoring them and hoping for best. A compromise solution is to check for blisters after a minute or so and to pierce and deflate any unusually large blisters with a knife. The finished pizza may be marred by craters, but will still be delicious.

• If, after mixing, your pizza dough looks more like a batter than a dough, add more flour until you achieve the desired consistency. I've had this problem when experimenting with type "00" soft wheat flour imported from Italy. I've also experienced a too-thin dough when accidentally using bleached all-purpose flour in place of unbleached. In both cases, I added more flour till the dough felt right and the pizzas turned out fine.

Pizza Sauce

This recipe is adapted from Peter Reinhart's "Crushed Tomato Sauce" in American Pie. For me, dried oregano defines pizza sauce and fennel makes it fabulous, but use whatever herbs you prefer. I've found the thickness of crushed tomatoes vary by brand; some are very thick. In that case I thin out the sauce with a bit of water and/or wine. You can use the sauce right away, but it's better with an overnight rest in the refrigerator. This recipe makes a lot of sauce -- enough for many pizzas. Store the leftovers in the freezer, preferably in 1 cup portions.

1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons dried oregano

3/4 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed

2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt, more to taste

pinch sugar (optional)

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and stir well. Taste for salt; add more as needed. If the tomatoes have no added salt, I typically use an additional 1/2 teaspoon (totalling 1 teaspoon salt). Sometimes, I add a pinch of sugar or more vinegar to get the right sweet-tart balance. If it seems too thick, stir in a bit of water.



Each 12 - 14 inch pizza yields 8 slices. The nutrition facts are based on a thin-crust pizza using half the basic dough recipe above and 4 ounces part-skim mozzarella cheese. The sausage pizza facts assume 2 ounces Italian sausages.

Nutrition Facts for 1 slice cheese pizza: 122 calories, 6 g protein, 5 g fat, 270 mg sodium, 8 mg cholesterol, 1 g fiber

Nutrition Facts for 1 slice cheese & sausage pizza: 142 calories, 7 g protein, 6 g fat, 319 mg sodium, 12 mg cholesterol, 1 g fiber

Helpful Pizza Links

Homemade Pizza by Elise of Simply Recipes
Best Pizza Dough Ever Recipe at 101 Cookbooks
Good article on pizza crust from New York Times
Excellent flatbread-type pizza dough recipe in NYT