Cheese Pizza - 12" Rounds or Pan Style

 These recipes are from Pizza: Any Way You Slice It by Charles & Michele Scicolone. These are my go-to dough, sauce, and cooking variations. You can dress them up any way you like and it pretty much works out.

I'm posting these because my 5-year-old grandson, Andy, said my cheese pizza was way better than Mommy's. To be fair, his Mommy (my daughter Hannah) usually resorts to frozen pizza and my own household was very familiar with brands like DiGiorno from the freezer.

I've got more time but Hannah still asked for the recipe. And here it is — somewhat streamlined by me over the years

Basic Dough for Two 12-Inch Pizzas
3-1/2 to 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1-1/3 cups warm water (105°F to 115°F) 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons salt (or 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt)
1 teaspoon sugar or honey

To make by hand: Mix 3-1/2 cups flour and all other ingredients together and stir until a sticky dough forms. Knead it firmly for 5 to 8 minutes until it feels smooth and elastic. Add tiny amounts of the remaining flour if it sticks too much.

To make by standing mixer: Put all ingredients in standing mixer and mix using flat beater until it comes together in a shaggy mass. Switch to the dough hook and knead on medium until smooth and elastic, adding flour as necessary if too sticky.

First rise: Shape the dough into a ball and place it in an oiled bowl. Cover it with a clean towel or plastic wrap. Let it rise in a warm spot for 1 hours until doubled in size. [My note - this dough could also sit in the fridge overnight. Halve amount of yeast. Let sit at room temp a couple of hours before using.]


Pizza Maker's Sauce
This is very easy. If it makes more than you need, it freezes well.

2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped

Pinch of crushed red pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes [I have lately taken to using passata which is an uncooked tomato puree strained of skin and seeds. It originated in Italy but you can find it in regular stores in Dallas.]

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Salt

In a large skillet, cook the garlic and red pepper in the oil over medium heat until the garlic is goledn, about 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, oregano, and salt to taste. Bring to a simmer.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, or to to 15 minutes. Let sauce cool before spreading on pizza dough. 

For two 12-inch pizzas
Shape balls: Punch down the dough to let the air out. Divide it into two equal pieces and roll each into a smooth ball. Cover them and let them rest for 30 minutes.

Stretch or roll each ball of dough into a 12-inch circle on a floured surface, transfer to parchment paper, add your sauce and toppings and cheese, and bake at 475°F–500°F (or on a preheated pizza stone at 500°F) for 8-10 minutes. 

   

It can bake on the parchment paper if using a pizza stone (my preferred method).

For a Home-style Pan Pizza (Italian style)
Dough from above basic recipe

1 recipe Pizza Maker's Sauce

8-12 ounces thinly sliced mozzarella [I use provolone]

1/4 cup grated Parmigiano

Olive oil

Oil a 15x10x1" jelly-roll pan. With your fist, flatten the dough. Place the dough in the center of the pan and stretch and flatten to fit. Let rise about 30 minutes until puffy. Preheat oven to 450°.

With fingertips, firmly press dough to make dimples at 1" intervals over surface. Spread sauce over the dough, leaving a 1/2" border. Bake 20 minutes.

Remove pizza from oven.  Arrange slices of cheese on top. Sprinkle with grated cheese, drizzle with a little olive oil. Return to oven and bake 5 minutes until cheese is melted and crust is browned.

The Pizza Maker's Sauce (Salsa Pizzaiola)

There isn't an easier pizza sauce around. Or one that is tastier. It also freezes well. This is from Pizza: Any Way You Slice It by Charles & Michele Scicolone. It's my favorite pizza cookbook. 

Pizza Sauce 

Makes about 3 cups 

2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped 

Pinch of crushed red pepper 

3 tablespoons olive oil 

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes 

1 teaspoon dried oregano 

Salt (though I almost never use it) 

 In a large skillet, cook the garlic and red pepper in the oil over medium heat until the garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer. 

Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, or 10-15 minutes. Let cool before spreading on pizza dough. Keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or in the freezer for 1 month. (I've used it after a year and it is still good.)

Cheesy Chicken-and-Spinach Stromboli Ring

Another one from the September Cooking Light, which is proving to be a real winner. This was absolutely delicious. I'd never heard of a Stromboli before and when I went researching it most of the recipes looked like variations of an Italian sub sandwich made in a pizza dough jelly roll. Which I'm also fine with. But this has a creamy element which I'd be loathe to give up as well as a satisfying heft.

We wound up adapting the recipe a fair amount:

• We made a white flour pizza crust (using flour instead of Parmesan in the linked recipe). I just felt like whole wheat would compete with the filling too much.
• We did use the fresh spinach specified by the recipe but will use thawed frozen spinach next time since it just gets cooked in with the rest of the filling.
• We didn't want to buy a rotisserie chicken (which we almost never do) just for this recipe so just cooked up a chicken breast ourselves in the oil and garlic. It would be a perfect recipe for using leftover chicken.
• The ring adds a very festive air but we might also try it as a straight Stromboli.

Cheesy Chicken-and-Spinach Stromboli Ring
Serves 4

12 ounces fresh prepared whole-wheat pizza dough (Cooking Light's note: Most store-bought pizza dough comes in 1- or 1 1/2-pound portions, but you only need 12 ounces for this recipe. Use the leftovers to make breadsticks or flatbread the next day.)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
8 ounces fresh spinach
1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated (about 1/4 cup)
6 ounces shredded skinless rotisserie chicken breast (about 1-1/2 cups)

Step 1
Let pizza dough stand at room temperature 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 450°F.

Step 2
Heat a large skillet over medium-low. Add oil and garlic; cook, swirling occasionally, until garlic is golden, about 2 to 4 minutes. Drain oil from skillet into a small bowl to reserve, keeping garlic in skillet. Add spinach to skillet; increase heat to medium-high, and cook, tossing constantly, until spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes to cool.

Step 3
Stir together ricotta and Parmesan in a medium bowl. Add spinach mixture and chicken; stir well to combine.

Step 4
(Cooking Light has pictures which really help with this part.)

Place dough on a large piece of parchment paper, and roll dough into a 20- x 6-inch rectangle. Spoon chicken mixture down center of dough to make an approximately 20- x 3-inch strip.

Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, create tabs in dough on both sides of filling: Starting at the edge of dough, cut 1-1/2-inch-long diagonal slits (1/2-inch to 3/4-inch apart) in toward filling.

Fold tabs over filling, and pinch tabs together to seal.

Carefully shape stuffed dough into a ring; pinch ends of dough together to seal.

Step 5
Transfer stromboli ring on parchment to a baking sheet; fold or cut away excess parchment to fit baking sheet. Brush half of reserved garlic-infused oil over dough. Bake stromboli at 450°F until dough is browned, about 18 minutes. Remove from oven; brush with remaining garlic oil. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Tandoori Pizza

This is also from James McNair's New Pizza. It is a delicious adaptation of Indian flavors to pizza and we really like it a lot.

Tandoori Pizza

Use Garlic-Glazed Chicken Pizza recipe as your guide, incorporating the changes below.

Step 1:

1 c. yogurt

2 T lime juice

2 T grated ginger

2 T minced garlic

1 T paprika

2 t garam masala

1 t salt

1 t cayenne

1-1/2 lb boned and skinned chicken breast halves or thighs

Combine yogurt through cayenne to make a marinade. Marinate chicken for a minimum of 4 hours up to overnight.

Preheat oven to 500°. Place chicken on a rack set over a shallow roasting pan and roast 10 minutes for breasts or 20 minutes for thights. Let cool. Chop into small bite-sized pieces. You can refrigerate chicken at this point. Just bring it to room temperature before making the pizza.

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Step 2:

1 recipe of California-Style pizza dough (use sesame oil instead of olive oil; use no cheese in the crust, substitute an equal amount of flour)

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Step 3:

Mango chutney

3 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated

Chicken from step 1

1/2 cup sliced green onion

On the shaped pizza dough, spread a thin layer of chutney on dough, top with cheese, leaving a 1/2" border around the edges. Distribute the chicken over the cheese and sprinkle with green onions. 

Transfer pizza to the preheated oven and bake until crust is golden, about 10 minutes.

Neapolitan -Style Pizza Dough ... Something to Build On

Since we've been talking about pizza, I can't believe I never gave you some of the most basic recipes that are used to "build" pizza around our house.

From my favorite cookbook on the subject, Pizza: Anyway You Slice It by Charles and Michele Scicolone,  comes one of the favorite pizza doughs of our household. I used it when we had a party and had a couple of people particularly comment upon how much they like it.

It has what may seem like an unusual ingredient, cake flour. This is included because Italian flour is lower in gluten than American flour and cake flour helps turn the crust into a tender, easily stretched dough which is easy to shape.

I'll confess that I often cheat and use 2-1/2 teaspoons yeast, a more traditional amount (at least for someone who is used to bread baking), to get the dough to rise in an hour or less.

Neapolitan-Style Pizza Dough

1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1-1/4 cups warm water
1 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
2-1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
Olive oil for the bowl

Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let stand for 1 minute, or until the yeast is creamy. Stir until the yeast dissolves.

In a large bowl, combine the cake flour, 2-1/2 cups of the all purpose flour, and the salt. Add the yeast mixture and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour if necessary, until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Lightly coat another large bowl with oil. Place the dough in the bowl, turning it to oil the top. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm, draft free place and let rise until doubled in bulk; about 1-1/2 hours.

Flatten the dough with your fist. Cut the dough into 2 to 4 pieces and shape the pieces into balls. Dust the tops with flour. Place the balls on a floured surface and cover each with plastic wrap, allowing room for the dough to expand. Let rise 60 to 90 minutes, or until doubled.

Thirty to sixty minutes before baking the pizzas, place a baking stone or unglazed quarry tiles on a rack in the lowest level of the oven. Turn on the oven to the maximum temperature, 500 to 550 degrees.

Shape and bake pizzas in desired fashion.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

UPDATE: also lost in the great labeling disaster of 2012, so am reposting it here.

The inspiration for this is from James McNair's New Pizzas, but I have streamlined his process for cooking the chicken which seemed unnecessarily long and drawn out.

Basically follow the recipe for Garlic-Glazed Chicken Pizza but substitute this for the Garlic-Glazed Chicken in the recipe:

1. Cut 1-1/2 pounds of chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces.
2. Saute them in some oil.
3. Mix them with 1 cup of barbecue sauce, either of your own making or your favorite tomato-based kind from the store.

Nothing could be simpler and this is very similar to the California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza.

Garlic-Glazed Chicken Pizza

UPDATE: What happens when you think you are simply labelling a recipe and instead delete it by accident? You wind up revisiting something that you published way back in 2005 and have forgotten to make since then. I'm going to make this over the weekend for sure. I am so happy that Google had it cached so I could pull it out of the ether and back into the here and now.

Purely delicious and even the pickiest eater in the family had three pieces. Be sure to leave yourself plenty of time for this. It is simple, especially if you have any experience making bread but it does take a while. From James McNair's New Pizza. If the idea of making pizza dough is intimidating, I can assure you that it is very easy. And nothing is stopping you from trying the pizza using a premade dough or shell.

(Foodo del Mundo took pictures when they made this pizza ... scrumptious.)

Standard Pizza Crust
From Pizza California Style, by Norman Kolpas

The following recipe produces a thin, golden California-style pizza crust. Parmesan cheese mixed into the dough adds an extra dimension of flavor, and olive oil contributes to its crispness. I have rewritten the recipe to work a little better.

Ingredients:

1 packet (or 1 tablespoon) active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1-1/2 cups lukewarm water

Instructions:

Put the dry ingredients in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Turning the machine on and off rapidly, pulse several times to blend them. With the machine running, pour in the oil and 1 cup water through the feed tube. Then gradually add enough of the remaining water to form a smooth dough. Continue processing until the dough forms a ball that rides around the work bowl on the blade; the dough at this point will be sufficiently kneaded.

For mixing dough by hand, stir together the dry ingredients in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Add the oil and 1 cup of water and gradually stir from the center outward. Add additional water as needed to make dough hold together in a shaggy mass. When the ingredients are well combined, remove the dough from the bowl and knead it vigorously on a floured work surface for 5 to 7 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic.

Transfer the dough to a large bowl that has been oiled or coated with nonstick spray. Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel and let the dough rise for 30 to 45 minutes or until it has doubled in bulk. If it is more convenient, you can let the dough rise in the refrigerator for several hours instead.

Remove the dough from the bowl and cut it into four equal portions weighing about 6 ounces each, one per pizza. The dough is ready to shape and bake.

To freeze the dough, wrap each ball securely in plastic wrap and place in the freezer. The dough will keep well for several weeks. Defrost it at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, or all day in the refrigerator, before making the pizzas.

Yield: Makes about 1-1/2 pounds dough; serves 4

Garlic-Glazed Chicken Pizza

Step 1:
1 recipe of California-Style pizza dough

Set up for first rise then proceed with rest of recipe.
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Step 2:
2 garlic heads, separated into cloves, peeled, and coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons crushed dried chile
1/2 cup soy sauce
5 tablespoons honey
1-1/2 cups unseasoned rice vinegar

Combine all in a bowl, mix well, and set aside.
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Step 3:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1-1/2 pounds boned and skinned chicken breast halves (about 4), cut into bite-sized pieces

In a large sauté pan or skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook, stirring frequently, until opaque on all sides, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted utensil, transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.

Pour the garlic mixture into the skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until the sauce is reduced to the consistency of syrup, about 15 minutes. Return the chicken pieces to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until the chicken is lightly glazed, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until needed; return to room temperature before adding to pizza.

About 30 minutes before baking the pizza, preheat oven to 500°. If using a pizza screen or ventilated pan, brush it with vegetable oil or coat with spray and set aside. If baking directly on a stone or tiles, sprinkle a pizza peel with cornmeal and set aside. [I use the stone and peel method. However, much superior to the cornmeal is to prep the dough on a piece of parchment paper. Slide the peel under it and then slide the whole thing onto the stone. After about 3-4 minutes, the dough is cooked enough that you can easily pull the paper out from under the pizza, using a quick, short jerk.]
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Step 4:
2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese (about 8 ounces)
1 cup shredded mozzarella (about 3 ounces)

In a bowl combine the cheeses [I used all mozzarella]. Set aside.
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Step 5:
On a lightly floured surface, roll out or stretch the dough and shape it as desired. Place the dough on the prepared screen, pan or peel [or parchment paper]. Top with cheese mixture, leaving a 1/2" border around the edges. Distribute the chicken over the cheese. If using a pizza peel, give it a quick, short jerk to be sure that the bottom of the crust has not stuck to it.

Transfer pizza to the preheated oven and bake until crust is golden, about 10 minutes.
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Step 6:
1/4 cups finely chopped green onion [I forgot all about this but it would have been quite tasty]

Remove the pizza to a wire rack and let stand about 2 minutes, then transfer to a cutting tray or board. Sprinkle with green onion. Slice and serve immediately. Serves 8.

Fire up the grill. It's time for ... pizza?

Grilled Pizzas and Piadinas

We arrived at our apartment after midnight. I fired up our little Smokey Joe grill and rolled out the dough. Once the coals were ready, I tossed the dough onto the grate. The fire came up immediately and singed the hair off my arm. After I finished my little dance, found out that the fire was too hot and I used too much oil, a volatile combination.

But Karla was going to have her grilled pizza. When I tried again, I tossed the dough onto the grill and watched a network of bubbles rise on the surface. We tapped our first grilled pizza and set it under the broiler to crisp. We knew we had found our ticket, even before we tasted it.

Many of us are used to the idea of grilling pizza to emulate the effects that restaurants achieve with wood-burning ovens. However, how many of us have really ever tried it? It sounds like a good idea but when we're getting right down to it, the idea of tackling grilling pizza is kind of intimidating.

That's why it's a good thing that pizza grilling pioneer Craig Priebe has written this book. He demystifies the whole process by sharing the knowledge gleaned in his years of expertise as a grilled pizza restauranteur. There are step-by-step instructions for prepping ahead of time, simplifying the process, and even party planning. Don't have a grill? He has tips for grilling inside. This guy is not taking anything for granted and that takes the pressure off the tentative cook nervous about watching pizza dough slide into the coals.

I was especially intrigued by some of the unique combinations that Priebe offers. He has the standard Margherita and American style "combo" pizzas that we might expect. However, he also has some ideas that literally had my mouth watering when I was reading the ingredients. For example:

• The Moroccan (curried chicken, roasted garlic, and Kalamata olives)
• The Asperago (asparagus with pesto, pine nuts, and Brie)
• The Millennium (ground lamb, feta, and Kalamata olives)

He also introduced me to the concept of Piadinas which are a popular Italian flatbread sandwich. After the flatbread is grilled for a minute or two on each side, they are filled with various tasty combinations of ingredients.

Ideas for salads are also included as are grilled pizza ideas for desserts. I must say that I usually am not interested in the idea of "dessert" pizza which I occasionally encounter in various cookbooks. However, the Cinnamon Churros, or as he describes them, "sugary crusts with ice cream and syrup" did capture my imagination ...

Combine this intriguing content with DK Publishing's trademark lush photography and clear, simple layout and you have a single subject cookbook that is a winner. When our "festival month" of May is over and I have time to think about cooking then you may be sure I will be exploring some of these recipes.