Cast Iron Pan Pizza

First the Washington Post ran a whole series of articles about the best kinds of pizza, thus making me crazy for pizza, then I found this video and I was irresistibly drawn to the idea of making the pan pizza.

First I need to hunt the ingredients. Publix has bread flour, but for some reason doesn't have whole milk mozzarella, so I found that at Walmart (Target claims to have it on their web page, but no such thing appeared in their cheese section), so just gathering the ingredients has been an adventure.

I've been meaning to get a pizza cutter, so as part of this quest I also got this one.

I've copied out the recipe from the video:

• 11 oz bread flour
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 8 oz warm water (105 to 110 degrees)
• vegetable oil spray

• 1 can whole peeled tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 garlic clove minced
• 0.25 teaspoon sugar
• 0.25 teaspoon fine salt
• 0.25 teaspoon dried oregano
• pinch red pepper flakes

• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 4 oz shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 7 oz shredded whole milk Mozzarella

Mix bread flour, salt, yeast in bowl, add warm water, stir with wooden spoon till it comes together and knead a bit by hand in the bowl. Should be sticky dough.

Spray oil in pie pan, move dough to pie pan, spread out a bit, spray oil on top of dough, cover with plastic, off to the fridge for at least 12 hours, the longer the better. Before using dough, let sit on counter for half hour.

Add 3 tablespoons oil to 12 inch cast iron pan, swirl to coat the bottom, then IMPORTANT transfer some oil to hands so dough won't stick to them. Transfer dough from pie plate to cast iron pan, work it a bit to reach almost to edge of pan. Reuse the plastic from the pie pan to cover the cast iron pan and leave at room temperature for 1.5 hours.

While waiting on dough, make sauce. Drain can of whole tomatoes in sieve, then break the tomatoes by hand in sieve to get the inside juice drained. Press on solids in strainer to get juice out. Tomato solids go in food processor along with all the other sauce ingredients listed above. Process about 30 seconds till smooth.

Add sauce to dough in pan, spread to half inch from edge. Build a “cheese wall” of Monterey Jack around edge, press into side of pan to give it structure. Spread Mozzarella over the top. Preheat oven to 400, place pan on bottom rack. Bake 25 to 30 minutes till top looks well browned.

Move to stove top, let sit for 3 minutes till sizzling stops, go around edge with thin knife, lift edge to check how brown the bottom is. If there isn't enough color, heat on stove top for a few minutes till it looks better.

Transfer to wire rack, let cool for 10 minutes, transfer to cutting board, slice and eat.

Hopefully, the eating step won't involve the whole thing and I'll have leftovers to reheat in the air fryer. [Managed to restrict myself to two pieces, so I have 4 pieces in the fridge.]

If this isn't a disaster, maybe the next time I crave pizza, I'll try making it again and adding toppings like sausage, mushrooms, and onions (but I'm sticking to the exact recipe in the video for try number one).

Conclusion: Not a disaster, but not so sublime I feel the need to keep making pizza myself. Too much trouble. The sauce could be better. At least it looked pretty much exactly like the pizza in the video (both outside and inside).