Easy peasy....basic dough...
3 3/4 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsps salt
4 tsps yeast
1 2/3 cups water

Mix all together....you can add 2 tblps olive oil
And/or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
And/or 2 tblsps grated p-arm....and some oregano

Not rocket science....mix all together...for the amounts given, tear off half and roll or press into a flat shape n a peel....add "stuff"...slice onto a stone in a preheated 500 oven
Eat soon!

Will the common pizza toppings all cook in the time that it takes for the pizza to cook? Or will I have to pre-cook things like mushrooms, onions, etc?

What goes with lots of little experimental pizzas?

Ideas floating around here - yea or nay to each?
- Little glass tumblers of ceviche with garlicky salsa
- Panko'd, deep fried trout slices on handy skewers
- Chicken strips fried in sugar (I've made this before, it sounds weird but everyone likes it, well almost everyone)
- Deep fried egg yolks (I'm told you half freeze them first, I need to get the process)
- Chinese sausage in crispy fried rice balls

I just got off the phone with my second mother (you may remember her picture from a thread a few months ago). She gave me her candied bacon recipe (slow cook bacon to render out fat, place in oven on foil with raw sugar, cool on brown paper bags), is sending me her currant-and-cassis sauce recipe, and told me how to do the deep fried egg yolks.

The list above seems to have a lot of fried stuff. Maybe I need some simmered dishes? Suggestions humbly welcomed . . .

I have done many different pizzas. I can't remember all of them. Many I have posted here.

I was going to make a pizza using popover mix. Have not found a pan for it yet.

phyllo dough pizza was good, black garlic pizza was dramatic, green tomato with green tomato sauce was nice, puff pastry pizza was super -----

Yes, Chinese sausage instead of other toppings works. Here is what I have done:

Freeze Chinese sausages first. Using a veggie peeler, you can slice paper thin sausages to put on top of the pizza.

dcarch

I've found that even with a stone, if you are making a pizza with tomato sauce, to avoid a soggy crust, you should bake the crust without any toppings for maybe 5 minutes. Then take it out, put on the sauce and other toppings and return to oven. White pizzas (no tomato sauce) don't need this treatment.

Also, the stone and pizza should be on the lowest shelf in the oven; if not, the top burns before the crust is done.

Mushrooms do not need precooking, but sausage etc. does.

I alwayus fry my gr beef and veggies first that way theyre all done The pizza wont burn.I put everything beef,onions,pepper,bacon,pepperoni,little hammmmmnow Im hungry for some pizza.

I've never had a problem with the crust getting soggy, I just use a stone and bake on the lowest rack of the oven at a high (475 - 500) temp. Preheat well, and it never has been an issue!

One of our favorite (non-traditional) topping combinations is caramelized onions (don't take them to dark brown, just light tan is fine, they will get darker in the oven) and gorgonzola.

Good luck with your pizza party!

Alexa

Johnliu, I love your imagery!

I've started using AnnT's baguette recipe for my pizza dough. Interestingly enough, I started some yesterday morning for pizza dinner last night. I love it because it does the opposite of what you're looking for, it makes yummy, fat risen, chewy pizza crusts. I've noticed the trend is towards thin crusts, but whenever I eat one of those frozen thin crust pizzas (yuck) I feel like they've just put some ingredients on a big round cracker. Not what I like. But, home made dough that is thin and crispy would probably be great.

I wonder if you're using Asian type ingredients, if you could use some kind of won ton or rice paper type stuff for your crust? I have no idea if that would work.

Have fun at your party. I know you'll make great food.

Sally

Sister makes pizza almost every Friday. Buys yeast in "bulk"... think at Costco... 1-2 lb bag...that's a LOT of yeast, unless you make bread ALL the time!?! She gave me a mason jar of the stuff, knowing that it'd possibly use its oomph before she used it all. Jar stays in freezed. I just dip out what I need.

Used to dig out the little cookbook that came with my KA stand mixer to check recipe, but now it's kinda of a "dump" thing for me.

A cup (maybe cup and a half) of warm water... was kinda surprised how warm 110 actually is. Usually run hot water to warm of metal bowl to stand mixer. Warm water, heaping TBSP of the yeast, pinch of sugar... let sit a little while till starts too bubble. A glug of good olive oil and then enough flour until it's "done"... not too dry, probably a little wetter than some might do it. A puddle of more olive oil in large bowl to coat dough. I preheat oven to LOWEST possible setting (think 175 on my oven) just until it's warm, then turn off while doing all the mixing. Put a clean towel over bowl and set in warm oven. This yeast is very powerful... bulging up in not much more than half an hour. Depending on how thick you like your crust... could be 2 good sized thin crust pies.

Doesn't take long to bake in oven set as high as it goes... that 550 for me. Cheese will brown during baking time... guessing cuzz I can't bake at SCREAMING hot temp!?! Last time I made pizza, did a little experiment. First, saw on "Ciao Italia" crust rolled out on parchment. Sauce and any other topping... not cheese... on parchment... on pizza pan... I have one with holes in it. Baked about half way... crust puffing and barely showing signs of browniing. Pulled out of oven, slid off parchement and back onto pan, THEN cheese on top and back iin for second half of bake time. Cheese came out less brown and more GOOEY, the way I like it.

I've been making a lot of pizza recently. It bakes well on a heavy large pizza stone in the BarBQ. I don't pre-cook anything. I preheat the stone with all three burners on medium and then turn off the center burner under the stone after the pizza goes on. If it is near freezing out there, I leave all burners on with higher settings. Bake approx. 25 minutes until crust is fairly rigid.

Dough is basic bread (flour, salt, water) with 1T olive oil. 1 rise, deflate, rest, roll out on parchment paper. Press center thinner with hands, spread tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce, add shredded mozzarella, thin toppings of choice, and finally more cheese including some Parmigiano.

Back again to see what pizza sauce people like to use... canned or jarred. Have tried a few jarred "pizza" sauces... Ragu, Cento, etc... to me, just taste like any other pasta sauce. I prefer Don Pepino's... canned, tastes like sauce at pizzeria.

SWMBO reminded me that we, meaning she, used to make pizza back in the '80's and early '90's. Which is, I suppose, why we have the stone.

She pulled out her old recipes for pizza sauce, courtesy of a friend from Alabama who was, at the time, really into big, flamboyant, soul food sort of flavor. Maybe still is, I haven't seen her for ages.

M_____'s pizza sauce recipe: Tomato sauce, tomato paste, a crazy amount of sugar, bay leaves, oregano, and half a bottle of Tiger Sauce.

Simmering now. It tastes pretty, err, hot.

Klsieverd, If I have leftover pasta sauce, I just use that, and add more seasonings and herbs and hot sauce to it.

I make my own pizza sauce, if it's just one pizza, I will slowly saute some onions in olive oil, when close to caramel color add some sliced garlic then half a can of Contanadina tomato paste a good glug of red wine and simmer a bit while I get the crust going.
I also use a basic French bread type of crust....but have learned that if you really want a thin crust that you can roll without it snapping back at you....add a couple of tablespoons of corn meal to the flour. the theory is that the corn meal cuts the gluten strands and lets you roll the crust thinner.
I don't cook any vegetables first and I don't prebake my crust....and I don't bake it on parchment.....and it sure isn't soggy!
I slice any veggies really thin....like onion or mushrooms or peppers....all meats are precooked.....and I rub the crust with olive oil and a crushed clove or 2 of garlic before I start adding toppings.
Remember, you don't sauce a pizza like you sauce a plate of spaghetti. Pizza sauce should be thick and highly seasoned....But I do my "seasoning" with red pepper flakes....not tiger sauce!!
Pretty well what I have discovered over the years of tossing stuff together...you can put a lot of different combinations of stuff on a thick or thin yeast or other crust, bake at a screaming hot temp and it's good!....even without gooey cheese!

Sometimes I use sauce, sometimes I don't. Friday when we had pizza, I used the left over sauce I made for our Christmas lasagna. It was a bit thin, which didn't bother me (I didn't think about the thickness, but Linda, you're right, a thicker sauce would have been better), and a little sweet for my taste, but not bad at all, and I liked being able to use a left over. I just reviewed the recipe, and it was just canned tomato sauce, a little sugar and salt, and water. No wonder it was a little thin!

So, John, let us know how it all turned out!

Sally

Our New Years' Eve party is always a game night. The main group of contestants, our anointed Scrabble Masters, battle it out around the dining table, thrusting and parrying with their Official Dictionaries. The local Monopolists exploit each other at the living room game table. Sorry boys, but only one of you will end up as the 1%. The chatterers and gigglers gather around the fireplace and the sideboard-turned-bar. A hard core of our older guy friends loiter in my kitchen, drinking scotch and sampling the production of noshes and nibbles. Our Quality Assurance team, I suppose.

People start arriving around 7 pm. At midnight there are poppers and honkers, party hats and industrial-size sparklers. We play "Auld Lang Syne" (Jimi Hendrix, Fillmore East 1970) extra loud. Injuries are tended to (those sparklers looked like welding torches), the hardest-core gamers get back to their tables, coffee is served. The last guest typically leaves around 2 am. We try to keep people supplied with food this whole time, lest they revolt and burn down our house with a sparkler.

What to serve for this situation? There are usually a couple trays of SWMBO's holiday almond roca and peanut brittle. As it is in part a neighborhood gathering, several dishes always get walked over, this year some yummy bacon cheese wraps and deviled eggs. I made some BBQ buffalo wings. SWMBO made an artichoke dip and her gorgonzola garlic cheesecake.

All fine and well, but after sitting out for three hours, those initial dishes aren't so appetizing. Let's not even mention what ceviche looks like after a couple hours on display. That need for continuing food is where the pizza worked nicely.

All the real pizza work was done ahead. The dough, the sauce, the slicing and dicing and mincing and sprinkling. When guests started arriving, the oven was pre-heated. About an hour into the evening, I finished off my second Caipirinha and started making mini-pizzas. It was a leisurely process. Stretch out a small rectangular crust, top, slide into oven. Wander around, kibitz at the game tables, refresh my drink, cut and serve the pizza, make another pizza, repeat.

My first-effort pizzas were nothing to write home about. But they were eaten all the same. We had pepperoni and mushroom pizza, olives and onion pizza, clams and olives pizza, crabmeat and scallops pizza, and for Miss Vegetarian, who wasn't wearing a turban tonight, roast brussels sprouts and egg white pizza.

I ended up not making a bunch of other stuff. About halfway through the afternoon prep, the weight of three weeks' non-stop house guests, too many holiday dinner parties, too much in-law time, and work that never let up until the last couple days of the year - it all came down. I suddenly got really tired, slumping tired, aching feet tired. So all the fun and frivolous dishes got thrown overboard. I have a refrigerator full of those fixins' that I've got to repurpose over the next few days. (What to do with a dozen oysters, a dozen frozen egg yolks, chicken strips marinated in sugar, etc?)

I did have fun during the party, but it was also a little bit about survival. I drank a quart of water for every cocktail. Ate mostly microwaved egg whites. Snuck upstairs for a couple of 5 minute lay downs.

And now it is the New Year. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know one thing about the coming year. There's not going to be any damned dinner parties or house guests for at least a month!