S SHAMEFUL as it is to admit, the song most frequently stuck in my head is that old McDonald’s “McPizza” jingle set to the Tarantella. This is way worse than just having the Tarantella stuck in your head, because a) you’re singing It’s a pizza Happy Meal, pepperoni and cheese over and over again, and b) you can’t stop wishing you had a personal pan pizza. But where can you get one now that McPizza has been retired? Why not your own kitchen, pizza enthusiasts?
My older brother makes some balls-to-the-wall pizza pies, and several months ago at a family function I took a spycam picture of an index card bearing his secret recipe. Herewith, the text of said index card:
• 2 cups water
• 5 heaping cups flour
• 2 packages yeast
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
Sprinkle yeast over water. Wait five minutes, add sugar, and stir. Add flour, salt, oil, and stir with large spoons until it comes together. Knead on counter. Oil ball, put in bowl, cover with plastic wrap. Let rise one hour.
It seemed simple enough, but what about “add sugar”? Add what sugar? How much? Impatient for a delicious pizza Happy Meal with pepperoni and cheese, and unable to get my brother on the horn, I took a wild guess: a not-even-heaping teaspoon. By the time I got a hold of him, and found out I was off by two or three teaspoons, it was too late. The dough was already entombed in Saran Wrap. It seemed to be rising—somewhat.
While waiting for that to do its thing, I whipped up a simple sauce à la The New Best Recipe, which I will paraphrase: Dump a 28-ounce can of tomatoes (whole, diced, whatever) in a food processor, and pulse it very slightly (unless you want a perfectly smooth sauce, which obviously you don’t). Heat a little olive oil and two minced garlic cloves in a saucepan. Add tomatoes and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.
Above, a pizza that came out pretty okay. The dough was a little dense, of course, not having risen as much as it should have. (The sugar, in case you’re like me and no good at science, is to feed the yeast. The less food the yeast gets, the less the yeast cooperates with your endeavor.) I don’t own a pizza stone or peel—I used a bunch of tiles from Home Depot for the former, and the back of a cookie sheet sprinkled with corn meal for the latter.
My second pizza (see below) got totaled. Usually you screw up on the first try, but I was so excited to eat my first pizza that I forgot several steps on my second go-round. The proper technique, if I remember correctly: Preheat your oven to 450°. Brush the dough with oil, slide it onto your tiles or stone, and bake for four or five minutes. Then take it out and add mozzarella, sauce, and toppings. Return to oven, bake until the crust because to look right—probably ten to fifteen minutes.
I don’t quite remember what I did to wreck this. It looks like I forgot the olive oil, and I’m pretty sure I forgot the cornmeal, because the dough stuck to the tiles—burned to them, in some spots—and ripped the pizza apart when I tried to take it out. I ate it anyway, naturally. Those black spots are anchovies.
For the record, since I did promise southern Connecticut recommendations, of which many more are coming soon, this is what a personal pan pizza ought to look like:
