Pan Pizza - Kenji

Recipe from UseRealButter.com

from Kenji’s Serious Eats Foolproof Pan Pizza

400g (14 oz. or 2 1/2 cups) bread flour, all-purpose flour works, too

10g (2 tsps) kosher salt, plus more for sprinkling

4g (1 tsp) instant yeast

275g (9.5 oz. or 1 cup + 3 tbsps) water

8g (~2 tsps) extra virgin olive oil, plus more to coat the pans

1 1/2 cups pizza sauce

12 oz. full fat hard mozzarella cheese, shredded

toppings of your choice

2 oz. Parmesan cheese, grated

Place the flour, salt, yeast, water, and olive oil in a large mixing bowl. Stir (or use the paddle attachment of a stand mixer) the ingredients together until well-mixed and no pockets of dry flour remain. Cover with plastic wrap and rest at room temperature (no hotter than 75°F) for 8-24 hours (I prefer the 24-hour option).

Remove the plastic from the bowl and sprinkle some flour on top. Generously flour your work surface. Turn the dough out onto the work surface (I use a soft pastry scraper to get it all out of the bowl) and divide the dough into two pieces*. Pour 2-3 teaspoons of olive oil in the center of each pan (I pour a little less to avoid major oil splatters in the oven). Shape each piece of dough into a ball. I do this by flouring my hands and holding the dough in my left hand while lightly smoothing the dough from the top, contouring down the side, to the base, and repeating this motion around the entire piece until it is tidy and spherical. Set a ball of dough in each pan, turning to the coat the dough in oil and moving it around to oil the bottom of the pan. Slightly flatten the dough. Cover the pans with plastic and let rise for 2 hours at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 550°F. With the tips of your fingers, flatten and spread the dough to the edges of the pan until the entire bottom is lined with dough. You can gently lift the edges up to burp any air pockets, repeating for the entire perimeter of the pan. Spread sauce on top of the dough, then distribute the cheese over the sauce. Sprinkle with salt and any desired toppings. Kenji drizzles olive oil over the top, but I don’t do that anymore because it makes a mess in my oven. Bake 12-15 minutes (I go 16 minutes) until the cheese is bubbly and starts to turn golden. Remove from oven and sprinkle the Parmesan on top. If the bottom is not golden (mine never is), place each pan on a stove burner set to medium flame (I use high) for 1-3 minutes until the bottom is crisp, but not burned. Remove from pan, slice, and serve hot. Makes 2 10-inch pizzas.

* If you have two 10-inch cast iron skillets, you can divvy the dough equally. If, like me, you have a 12-inch skillet and a 10-inch skillet, then we need to talk. First off, cast iron skillets are beveled at the edges and flare out as you go up from the base of the pan. Cast iron skillet sizes are based on the diameter of the top (the widest part) of the pan. My 12-inch skillet has a 10-inch base diameter and my 10-inch skillet has an 8-inch base diameter. I divide my dough according to the ratio of the surface area of each pan to the surface area of both pans.

The surface area of each pan is: pi x radius2, where the radius is half of the diameter of the pan. The radius of the smaller pan is 4 inches and the radius of the larger pan is 5 inches. The surface area of the smaller pan is pi x 42 and the surface area of the larger pan is pi x 52. Adding them together you get a total surface area of pi x (42 + 52) or pi x (16 + 25) or 41pi. To figure out the percentage of dough to place in the smaller pan, divide the surface area of the smaller pan by the total surface area: 16pi/41pi or 16/41 or approximately 40%. I weigh my dough in grams, multiply by 0.4 and that’s the amount of dough that goes in the smaller pan. The rest goes in the larger pan.