Couple of quick tips for pizza making. First, MJ's dough recipe is basic and very good. Pizza is supposed to have a yeasty crust, without a lot of sweetness. It is a platform for the other flavors. But the yeast-flavor just happens to compliment everything good about the other flavors.
A heavy, well seasoned, 10 inch (12 or 15 inch if you can find them) cast-iron pan works nearly as well as a pizza stone. It gives that crispy outside texture you're looking for. The secret behind both pizza stones, and cast iron being that they both hold there heat very well because of there thermal density, and both should be pre-heated.
Cast iron works phenominally in a Webber Kettle babecue grill, even without pre-heating, with the lid on teh grill of course. The charcoal is set up in a solid bed configuration and allowed to get very hot (about 550 to 600 degrees).
To prevent the cheese from scorching, place it on the crust first, followed by just enough sauce to cover. Follow with meats and veggies. But be careful with the placement. Before I had much experience with pizza, I thought that more meant better. I found out that if you absolutely smother the pizza crust with meats and veggies, the pizza flavor was unballanced, and the crust wouldn't cook through. You should add enough toppings to provide a good flavor, but still be abble to see the sauce underneath. That is, there should be gaps between the pieces. Cover with a bit more sauce.
Sauce should be very strong so that you don't need to drowned the pizza in order to taste it. The general flavors in pizza sauce are tomato, oregano, and salt. You can customize your sauce with the addition of tarragon, black pepper, extra-virgin olive oil (I like the flavor of Carrapelli brand for this application), red pepper, and/or fennel. Basil is sometimes used as well, but tends to add an unwanted sweetness if too much is used.
I'm a sauce nut and so add a bit more sauce over the other toppings in addition to the underlying sauce, but that isn't the usual thing to do.
If you're like me, and love pepperoni, here's another tip that I've developed. I place the pepperoni on first on top of the cheese but before the sauce. I love the stuff, but don't care for it all dried out and crunchy. It also develops an overly salty flavor when dried out. The sauce and other toppings prevent my favorite sausage from overcooking.
The smoke from the charcoal, and the almost scorched flavor from the intense heat really adds to the pizza flavor, which is why people rave about pizzas cooked in the Italian-style brick oven, the one with the fire in the back. The pizza is continually rotated in the oven every few minutes and the fire lightly scorches the crust. There are even pizza gourmets that insist on a crust with lightly scorched, or blackened edges.
There you have it from another pizza lover.
Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North
