Here is my personal recipe-better than any pizza I have ever purchased. I have to keep myself from making it all the time, otherwise, I would eat myself to death:
To be fair-I prefer my pizza deadly simple, without a lot of toppings. Here is what I do. (I don't make my own dough yet, but there is a store-bought artisan dough at a store near me that is as good as anything (crust-wise) that I have ever eaten.) I have tried to bake bread repeatedly over the years, and failed repeatedly. I just cannot get the hang of making my own bread or pizza dough. But I will try again...:)
- Put a pizza stone into the middle of the oven and preheat as high as you can go. Mine goes up to 500. I usually let it pre-heat for an hour.
- Shape dough into a disk on a floured surface then pick it up on your knuckles and move it into the classic shape.
- Cornmeal the peel and lay the dough on.
- In a bowl, whisk together olive oil, garlic (I use the paste) black pepper and oregano, then brush the entire dough with it right out to the edge. I brush as far as I can go, and be sure that none will drip down onto the peel.
- Take mixed Romano and Parmesan grated cheese and sprinkle liberally. Make EXTRA sure to get some of that on the very edge of the thicker crust where there will be no topping.
- Take fresh mozzarella slice it into thin disks as thin as it will let you (which is not too thin) but it is no big deal if it breaks up into pieces-it is better if it does, and you spread the mozzarella a bit sparsely over the dough out to the thicker edge but not on it.
The main purpose of the mozzarella at this stage here is to serve as a base to hold the pizza ingredients together when cutting and eating.
- Get a lot of fresh basil-dried basil is absolutely worthless even as an emergency measure-I usually have at least 12 medium sized fresh leaves, stalks discarded, and I stack them into a stack with decreasing leaf size as you stack, then roll them lengthwise to make a thick rolled tube of lovely basil. I keep perhaps another 6-10 whole leaves for the very end.
- I slice the basil just as thin as I can, slicing along the tube as if it were a jelly roll, then, I give a few slices through the pile of basil strips just to break them up a little.
- I take half, and sprinkle it over the sparse layer of mozzarella.
- Then I take two of the finest medium tomatoes I can find (not the biggest...the tastiest) I slice them very thin, and array them over the surface of the dough on top of the mozzarella. I put ground black pepper on the tomatoes here, but no salt. The Romano and Parmesan can be a bit salty, and adding salt here is too much, IMO.
- I take half of the remaining chopped basil, and distribute it over the tomatoes.
- I slice up the remaining ball of mozzarella into disks, and spread as many of them over the surface as I can to get this layer of cheese very thick.
- I sprinkle the remaining chopped basil everywhere, then take the whole basil leaves and place them in an artistic way on the surface of it all.
- Put it in the oven on the stone and bake for 11 minutes.
- At 11 minutes, eyeball it closely, but don't take it out unless it looks done. I have found that there is a wider range of crust consistency that is still "great" but crunchy crust-it is a disaster.
When it gets crunchy, you have ruined it, and it crosses that threshold quickly. At that point, you eat the pizza because you are probably hungry, not because it tastes brilliantly good.
If you do it right, you will see the flecks and strips of Romano and Parmesan that strayed onto the thicker outer crust, and they will be nicely darkened. And the crust will have that wonderful golden color with just a few places approaching brown.
Chewy inside. The outside has a hint of the olive oil/garlic/oregano flavor.
Chewy inside!
- I move it onto a large cutting board, let it sit for 10 min (for my own self preservation, as I have no self control with blisteringly hot pizza) then I slice and serve.
I like mine with lots of crushed red pepper...:)