Stovetop Skillet Pizza: a slice of disappointment

We miss hosting pizza parties with the wood-fired pizza oven we built in Arlington. In our small Barcelona flat we avoid cranking up an oven -- it gets hot here, and energy is more expensive than in the States. Could we make pizza on the stovetop?

TL;DR: No -- the corona was floppy and the crust gummy instead of crispy.

Classic Margherita: tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, basil

Most recipes for "cast iron pan pizza" build it in the pan but then cook it in a hot oven. The Kitchn has a good post that cooks one side at a fairly low temperature, then flips, tops, and finishes covered to melt the cheese; seems like a good place to start, but we'll make our own dough.

I'm using the same 66% hydration I used for our pizza parties, similar to when we tested steel, stone, and brick for the oven during COVID. The pizza flour we can find here contains sodium carbonate as a leavener which I don't want, so we'll use strong flour (Farina de blat de força) that has 13% protein -- close to the 12.5% that our Italian 00 flour had.

350 g  Flour, strong (13% protein)

  2 g  Yeast (1/2 tsp)

 10 g  Salt (volume depends on coarseness)

230 g  Water

Weigh the dry ingredients into a bowl, stir to combine, make a well, and weigh in the water. 

Stir, combine, and push around to get it to form a shaggy ball.

On the counter, knead enough to get the lumps out; it'll be sticky.

This should be good enough for an extended rise with the high hydration we're using -- the "no knead" technique.

Put back into a covered bowl or lidded tub and let rise slowly in the fridge for 1-3 days; the long slow fermentation develops a lot more flavor than fast rises; it should at least double in size. 

I let it rise 3 days, pulled it out 2 hours before starting to prep and saw it was bubbly -- hopefully not too over-risen. I turned out the 570 g blob onto a floured counter and cut it into three 190 g balls, shaped into balls, and dropped them into lightly oiled containers to rise a bit. I used this time to make a garlic-chili oil and gather toppings.

As the Kitchn says, I cooked the first side in a oiled cast iron skillet for a couple minutes to set it, then flipped and topped.

After topping, I covered with a lid until the cheese melted, and checked the bottom for scorching, and pulled it out when it was browned enough.

Our third came out with the best texture, using level #6 (of 0-9) on our induction cooktop for both sides. But the corona was gummy and the center didn't really seem cooked all the way through. It may be that our elderly induction cooktop doesn't have coils that extend to the edge of our cast-iron pan, but I really don't see how we could ever get a crust like from our pizza oven -- it's just a slice of disappointment. With a certified Napoli-style pizza place a half block from our house, this just isn't worth the time and trouble.

Our best: Mallorcan sobrasada and quail eggs

We'd like to try using the same dough recipe (the texture and quantity were good) but cook it on a barbeque. We've done this before, but we'll need something under it -- aluminum foil? -- or else it'll sag through rack like the clock in Dali's "Persistence of Memory".

Pizza Dough for a Crowd

We built a clay pizza oven in the back yard; it gets hot enough for Neapolitan pizza which by law needs to be 430-480C (800-900F), and results in beautiful pillowy crusts. Since it needs a lot of wood and a couple hours heating time, we need a large crowd to justify firing it up.

This recipe makes enough for 12 140g pizzas, which is about enough for 6 sedentary adults, or 4 hungry younger folks. The volume pretty much maxes out my Kitchenaid stand mixer. The international regulations specify a hydration percent between 55.5 and 62.5%, but I tend to go a bit higher, 66-70% hydration; here, I'll go with 66%, as wetter dough more difficult for inexperienced pizza makers to handle.

Before: 6 buckets each wit about 1.7Kg dough

After: 6 buckets risen to about 3L each

It's worth finding the proper pizza flour from Italy: the 00 grind is very fine and makes for a better result. We have found it at a very good price at a restaurant supply store, and at Literi's Italian market, and also bought it from a Neapolitan-certified pizza restaurant. It comes in 55-pound bags. Caputo is a fairly common brand, and it has 12.5% protein.

About 55 pounds of 00 pizza flour

1000 g Italian 00 Pizza Flour (2.2 pounds)
 660 g Water (2 3/4 C)
  30 g Kosher Salt (2 1/2 Tbs)
   5 g Yeast (2 tsp)

Knead 10 minutes.
Place in covered 2L container.
Let rise in the fridge 1-3 days.
The day of the pizza fest, pull the dough out about two hours before eating time and let warm up.
Divide into 12 pieces and roll into tight balls.
Let rise a while, covered; we do this in an inverted under-bed box.
Shape, put on cornmeal-dusted peel, sauce and top, then fire: they should be done in couple minutes if the oven is hot enough.

Pizza just put in the oven

Pizza party indoors: stone, cast iron, quarry tiles

We are jonesing for a pizza party but COVID-19 quarantine's put the kibosh on having a big group over, so we improvised indoors. We experimented with a pizza stone, cast iron griddle, and quarry tiles to see which produced the best crust.

Irene stuffed cheese in the crust, kinda fun actually

I made my usual pizza dough with Italian 00 pizza flour and a hydration of 70%: 500 g flour, 350 ml water, a teaspoon of yeast, and a tablespoon of kosher salt. The dough looked a bit dry, so I added a touch more water, but this turned out to make the dough a little too slack. We let it rise overnight in the fridge as we always do. In the morning, we divided and put individual balls in oiled plastic containers for the day to rise slightly.

An hour before baking, I heated the oven as high as it would go, 550F plus convection. I have a big heavy pizza stone on the bottom shelf, a thick cast iron griddle in the middle, and lined the top shelf with quarry tiles. Each pizza would sit on a hot surface and also be heated from the hot mass above. I let the oven preheat for about an hour so all the thermal mass would come up to temperature.

Top: quary tiles; middle: cast iron griddle; bottom: pizza stone

The dough in the containers slipped out easily so were a breeze to shape. We topped them then put them in the oven and compared the crust.

Irene topping the first pizza, done on cast iron griddle, middle shelf

Our pizzas took 4-5 minutes, compared to 1-2 minutes in the pizza oven. None of these puffed up like they do in our outdoor pizza oven, which gets to 800-1000F. We were surprised that the griddle produced the best crust. It was much less expensive, and more versatile, than the very heavy and thick pizza stone. The inexpensive quarry tiles did OK, probably about equal to the stone. Lesson learned: save your money, you don't need the pizza stone.

Nice browning on Irene's pizza, done on the cast iron griddle

Why didn't our pizzas puff? It may be that my extra hydration made them too slack, not enough structure. The lack of heat and thermal density may also have contributed. But we also realized that we didn't let the dough rest covered after shaping into balls, as we do outside.

Chris pizza done on stone

Chris' pizza on quarry tiles

While these pizzas were a far cry from the puffy, silky Neapolitan style pies we get from the outdoor oven, it was definitely quite good, and worth doing again.

Next time we do this inside, I won't be tempted to add water to my 70% hydration, and we'll let the shaped balls rise covered before stretching and topping.  I might move the stone to the top shelf and put our other cast iron griddle in the oven.

Pesto, fresh oregano, kalamata olives, bell peppers, mozza -- really tasty