Cast Iron Personal Pizza

IMAGE of cut, finished pizza

In the spirit of learning, I'd like to make this an informational post and realize that it is quite long, but really this is a relatively quick and easy process.

I would think more people have a cast iron pan than a dedicated pizza/baking stone, and a #8 pan is a great size for a personal or maybe two person pizza. By pre-heating the pan you can get results that are quite similar to using a stone: the crust is finished before the toppings are overcooked. This process will work fine for making pizza at any size or any vessel, a CI pan is just convenient.

Over the years I've experimented a lot with dough, starting from pre-made grocery store dough, to dough kits at first and then I quickly moved to doing my own research on different doughs processes, for which the [url=”http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php”]PizzaMaking[/url] forum is a great resource. Of recipes, the [url=”http://www.laurenslatest.com/fail-proof-pizza-dough-and-cheesy-garlic-bread-sticks-just-like-in-restaurants/”]'fail-proof dough'[/url] and [url=”http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.0.html”]Tom Lehmann's NY dough[/url] are great starting points.

The dough I'll be writing about here will make 4 crusts worth for a #8 cast iron, or an 8” modern Lodge. The size of the pizza is about 8 3/4”. If you have a different sized pan or want to bake this dough on a stone just increase the amount of flour and take percents of the rest of the components based on this list. Or just cut the same dough into bigger pieces, it will make two average sized pizzas. This is not intended to be a wet dough.

Dough Ingredients
[LIST]
[*]1 1/4 cup room temperature water
[*]1/4 cup warm water
[*]2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (one pack)
[*]2 teaspoons salt
[*]3 cups bread flour
[/LIST]

If you end up finding the dough too chewy you can try adding a tablespoon of fat in there, like olive oil.

Other things you will need are:
[LIST]
[*]Stand mixer, food processor, or wooden spoon
[*]Pizza cutter
[*]Chef's knife
[*]#8 Cast iron pan
[*]Large mixing bowl
[*]Tomato Sauce
[*]Mozzarella Cheese
[*]Desired toppings
[*]1 Tablespoon of butter or olive oil
[*]Pastry brush
[*]Plastic wrap or small containers
[*]Towels
[*]Small bowl
[/LIST]

Time approximations
[LIST]
[*]Dough: 1hr
[*]Rise: 1hr
[*]Hands-on prep: 15 minutes
[*]Cook: 15 minutes
[/LIST]

[INDENT][i]Making the Dough[/i][/INDENT]
I haven't hand kneaded pizza/bread dough for many years; I will be using a mixer here because I have access to one. If you're looking to get a mixer yourself, don't just get the standard kitchen aid like I've got here, Other models like the Bosch Universal and Ankarsrum Original are better suited to the task, and more worthwhile in general from what I have gathered in my research.

Perhaps I'll make an addendum if I have anything worth posting about concerning hand kneading, but here are some resources that would be far more useful than anything I could say. If you're hand mixing, the process is similar to what I've written here, but is of course more labor intensive. Just be careful to not over-flower the dough.

[url]http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2011/02/bread-baking-converting-bread-recipes-to-hand-kneading.html[/url]
[url]http://www.wikihow.com/Knead-Dough[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiMtyjNK8k0#t=27[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1timJlCT3PM[/url]

IMAGE of prep

Put 2 cups of the flour, along with all the other ingredients, into your mixing bowl. Wet stuff on top to avoid a cloud of flour. Slowly mix all the ingredients for a couple minutes to incorporate them, then walk away for about 20 minutes, allowing the water soak in. This resting period is known as an autolyse, and is done to help facilitate the formation of the gluten structures that are associated with the airy rise of classic pizzas.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/autolysejgpl4.jpg[/IMG]
Here is my dough after the autolyse.

After the 20 minute rest, start mixing on low speed for around 5 minutes. Then take your final cup of flour and begin sprinkling it on in gradual doses over the course of a couple minutes. Over the next 2 or 3 minutes, begin to bump up the speed of the mixer, but you don't need to make it go any faster than what you could do by hand.

The dough is ready for a ~500f bake when it is only slightly sticky but firm enough to not leave any residue on your fingers when you touch it – do not add additional flour even if you haven't used the full 3 cups. If you've added too much flour, which would make it totally dry to the touch, add a few drops of water. If you have access to a high temperature oven, you can look in to making a wetter dough that allows you to use steam to your advantage, though you probably wouldn't be reading this or using a cast iron pan if you do. There should be no lumps or patches of flour, and the surface of the dough smooth throughout. Your bowl should also be fairly clean, with everything you put in incorporated into the dough.

After another 20 minute rest you can do a [url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k5a2ZbJN_s”]window pane test[/url] if you wish to be sure of the strength of your dough. What you're checking for here is that you're able to stretch it without it tearing. As you become more adept at the process you'll be able to create dough that is very pliable, but good results should be easy to obtain if I explained this well enough.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/window6po2g.jpg[/IMG]
Here's the dough window paned after the rest. I apologize for the blurry pic, but my hand is clearly visible through the dough.

This will take experience, I don't know how to describe all the feelings that tell me when a dough is ready. Your first batch may just be acceptable, or it may be fantastic, but you will need to do a lot more to learn the process and make dough that is consistently good.

[INDENT][i]Preparing the Dough[/i][/INDENT]

When the rest is complete, place the dough on a cutting board and slice it into quadrants, then [url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_StjYBHqHU#t=69”]round[/url] the quadrants. Rounding is needed to let the dough rise evenly.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/roundstmkhh.jpg[/IMG]

If you just want to make one pizza this day, set one ball back into the bowl and let it go through another rise. For the other balls, let them sit for a few more minutes, then cut sheets of plastic wrap at least double their width and wrap them up individually. Be sure to use two layers for a good seal, as to prevent any leakage as they will expand before the yeast goes totally dormant if you're freezing.

Alternatively, get a few resealable containers if you plan on doing this more. This way you wont waste plastic or need an additional vessel to let the portioned dough rise in. Put a few drops of oil on a paper towel and rub down the inside of each container before putting in the dough.

 These can be frozen for a while, but I've always used them within a week or two. Let them sit in the fridge for an hour or so before freezing. When you want to use one, transfer it to the fridge the night before for thawing. You may need to loosen the wrap or move it to the back of your fridge (for colder air) depending on the temp of your fridge. Take it out to heat up, unwrapped, in a bowl, an hour or so before you plan to eat. Letting it rise in this state for less time is ok, but don't let it go for too long.

IMAGE of dough balls, risen, unwrapped frozen, wrapped.

Experimentation with fermentation time here can lead to interesting results – start simple but then if you leave the dough in the fridge for maybe a week you'll find different tastes and textures. By keeping it in the fridge the yeast will be suppressed, allowing other resident bacteria – lactobacilli - to develop flavor. If you plan to eat all 4 in the week, stick them all in the fridge instead of the freezer and see how they taste over time. You can achieve more interesting flavors by investing your time in maintaining a sourdough starter as well.

Please let me know if any of this is unclear and I will do my best to update it. I'd especially like feedback on the amounts, I usually don't quantify the ingredients like this, but it should be close. If you can't achieve results like I describe it's probably because the amounts are wrong. Add more flour or water and tell me what you had to do.

[INDENT][i]Preparing Toppings[/i][/INDENT]

As the dough is completing its rise, use the remainder of the time to prepare everything else, so that when your dough is ready everything else is all ready to go too. Once you put the sauce on the pizza you'll need to be able to move fairly quickly to prevent it from getting soggy.

Figuring out the toppings can be very personal, but I'd recommend starting simple. If this is your first time making pizza I'd even recommend spending the first batch of dough with just sauce and cheese to figure out that basic relationship.

Different cheeses and different methods of preparing cheese will alter the cooking process. Sticking with mozzarella, store bought shredded stuff is typically very dry and will lend itself fairly well to an even texture and bake, but likely won't give the stringy effect of fresh moz. I usually use fresh moz and have experimented with a few brands from my local stores, though I've yet to make it myself. The challenge with fresh moz is that it is wet, as such must be given special consideration in the way it is prepared. Excess liquid will lead to a soggy crust or a messy bite. Grating it will make it easier to simply dry off with a towel, but loses a bit of character I like from larger slices. I find a nice compromise to be slicing the moz, and then tearing it by hand into pieces somewhere in between that and grated bits, and the resulting increase in surface area makes it easier to drain without crushing. Incidentally, that is also significantly less work than grating soft mozzarella.

I've been neglecting experimenting with making tomato sauce, as canned sauce can still provide a respectable experience. Maybe I'll make an addendum to this at some point when I have something worthwhile to share. For canned/jarred tomato sauce, just make sure there's not much in the way of ingredients beyond tomatoes, salt, oil, herbs, and sugar. At this size not much sauce will be needed, so use the smallest can you can find, or a resealable jar.

For additional toppings, I like to keep them small and in enough quantity to have a taste in every bite, and thin as to not protrude much from the pizza. My favorite combination would be white onion, bacon, and bell pepper. For the bacon I'll use here, I cut a pack into strips about half an inch thick and dumped them in to my cast iron to cook (I did this a few days ago and kept them bagged in my fridge).

Additionally, I'd recommend a tablespoon of butter or olive oil, which will be used to treat the crust before adding toppings. Melt the butter/pour the oil into a small bowl.

If you wanted to, you could really load up on toppings due to the high rim of the pan. If you want to go that way I'd look in to making a tougher pastry-style Chicago deep dish dough.

IMAGE of all toppings

[INDENT][i]Shaping the Dough[/i][/INDENT]

By this point I would have already started to pre-heat the oven to at least 500f, but that will depend on how long it takes your oven to heat up and how long it will take you to prep the pizza.

You'll need a flat surface to shape the dough on, and your cast iron for sizing the crust. I do not recommend using a rolling pin for pizza dough, the result of rolling the dough, squeezing all the air from it that we just put in all the work to facilitate, will be a texture more like sandwich bread than classic pizza crust. Describing shaping dough by hand via words alone will likely by fruitless so here's some videos. Please watch some of them if you have not hand shaped dough before. There are many techniques, all of them work to a degree, so experiment.

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiyZoCTB63M[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF685-HloAM[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_StjYBHqHU#t=244[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWybmSH66pQ#t=32[/url]
(easy mode) [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Y3xz1Syrc#t=212[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MidSfo6t3wE#t=255[/url]

IMAGE of ball, and steps to flat

The basic process I use is to gently press down on the dough to expand its area in a circular pattern and make a crust ring, then to pull the edges to begin stretching it out, and then finishing the shaping by lifting the dough and draping it over my hands. Remember to use a minimum of bench flour, your dough already has all it needs and it will only harm the cooking process if there is excess.

In your first attempts you will likely tear the dough a lot; as the tears happen notice specifically what you're doing at the time and how the dough is responding to pressure. If you pick up the dough and see thin, translucent areas, theses are points at which you have over stretched the dough. By examining what you're doing during this process you will learn to make an even crust, but your firsts attempts will have depressions or tears, especially if your dough didn't develop the strength it needed. When I first started out I certainly didn't have dough as nice as I can make now, and that didn't help. If the dough is snapping back when you stretch it, resulting in tears if you over stretch it, you needed to knead the dough more when you were making it.

Tears can be easily mended by stretching the dough over itself in that area and pressing down on the seam. Do not continue to shape the dough while there are tears, as it will only make them bigger. If there are exceptionally thin depressions, tear a bit of dough from the edge of the crust, stretch it out, and fill it in, or scrunch it up like mending a tear, as the area could simply burn up while cooking.

Once your dough is stretched to about the size of the cooking surface of your pan, wipe off any excess flour, and use your hands to drop it in to the pan. If the dough is stretched beyond the rim of the pan, let the dough lay on the rim and then press it in to make an even fit. You do not need to coat the surface of the pan with oil, cornmeal, flour, or anything else – for a seasoned pan at least, the crust will just slide out after cooking.

IMAGE of dough in pan

[INDENT][i]Topping the Pizza[/i][/INDENT]

Begin by melting the tablespoon of butter (or pouring olive oil) into a small bowl. Using a brush, coat the rim on the crust, and then use what is left to coat the inner surface. You can also experiment with adding herbs or other things to the butter/oil to flavor the crust. This isn't necessary but aids in the cooking process for relatively low-temp home ovens.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/buttered32uvf.jpg[/IMG]

After putting the fat on the dough, it'll probably be a good time to put the pan on the the stove to heat up if you don't have a lot of complex toppings. Set it on a burner at medium-low and continue adding toppings. Be careful here. Older cast iron pans are thinner than modern Lodge pans (less material means it reacts to heat quicker), so watch the dough for any changes, and turn down/off the heat if you start to see any.

Pour out the tomato sauce, and spread it with a spoon. Remember to leave a bit of room at the edge to allow a graspable crust to form. The amount of sauce desired is personal – I find that tomato is a powerful flavor that can overwhelm the rest of the toppings, so I use a thin layer, but my taste in this regard is seemingly unusual.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/sauce2ymkzm.jpg[/IMG]

I know it may seem silly, but when I first started making pizzas, I put the cheese over the rest of the topping, for some reason believing that the cleaner look was better. Practically, this means that with every bite you can pull of a big chunk of cheese and toppings from the rest of the slice, as it won't be able to stick to the crust. So use whatever toppings you like, but make sure you don't prevent the cheese from being able to stick to the crust to some degree.

Spritzing a bit of olive oil on the cheese can help it brown.

IMAGE of cheesed crust

For the rest of the toppings, I start with the smaller, thinner bits, and work my way up. In this case, I layered the onion, then the pepper, and then the bacon.

If you would like to add fresh herbs like basil, do not add them now, as they will burn in the oven, instead add them just after taking the pizza out of the oven. I've heard that wetting basil with the sauce can help it survive the cooking process though.

Just like the cheese, an excess of liquid is not desirable, so if you add sliced tomatoes, olives, and the like, be sure to mop up as much as possible.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/baconion_muns2_precesl4.jpg[/IMG]

[INDENT][i]Finishing[/i][/INDENT]

Once the handle of the pan is warm, or you start to see bubbles in the dough, move it to the oven to cook until the crust is looking golden and there's just a few splotches of browning on the cheese. Keep checking up on it. Cooking times will vary wildly due to toppings and your oven. Avoid opening the oven until everything looks done, as you'll lose a lot of heat in the oven, leading to the toppings and crust potentially being out of sync.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/baconion_muns2cujh0.jpg[/IMG]

When ready, use a spatula to gently pry the pizza from the pan. It should not stick unless some cheese touched the pan. It is still cooking at this point, give it a few minutes to cool down, generally half the time it just baked for. If you want to add any more fresh herbs, do so now.

[IMG]http://abload.de/img/botcrust2upjcn.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://abload.de/img/baconion_munsdjkge.jpg[/IMG]
The cheese seen here is actually muenster, which performs quite similar to moz and provides and interesting flavor

For cutting, a pizza cutter is of course ideal. If you do not have a pizza cutter, a large chefs knife or slicer may suffice, but not a serrated knife. Position the knife and use your palm to press down on the blade in a linear motion.

With a pizza cutter, start from inside the pizza and cut through crust on one side, then roll back down the line to cut the other side of the crust. Cutting the crust from the outside may cause the blade of the pizza cutter, or the pizza, to slide out of control.

IMAGE of cut pizza

If you want to heat up some leftover pizza, stick it back in the cast iron pan (again, no oil), set it to low and cover with a lid to cook for 5-10 minutes or until the cheese is hot/warm to the touch. If you don't have an appropriate lid construct a little hut out of foil, otherwise the crust will burn before the toppings are reheated.