I make a lot of pizza. A lot. It may not be exactly what a true pizza aficionado/snob wants, but it's what I want, and as we all know, that's what counts when you're baking! It's pretty good though, I'd say.
Sometimes though, I want trash. I think we all do, really – at least occasionally, anyway. And I'd be interested to know how to make "Friday night, grab it from a pizza place after several beers" pizza. Not good pizza. Not fancy pizza. Not Napoli-baker-approved, authentic, artisan, high-quality wood-fired pizza. Not award-winning slow-fermented sourdough. I'm talking crappy comfort food.
Anyone got any recommendations on how to create chewy commercial nonsense like that?
Thanks all!
How picky are you about the result? If you want it to be pretty close to a low end US pizza joint, it would be floppy, greasy, and have a thin crust with a flat-tasting tomato sauce and a lot of cheap cheese. How close do you want to stick to that template?
OTOH, after several beers maybe you don't care that much. If so, make most any dough that isn't too low or high hydration, let it rise, then start stretching it into a disk. Let it rest several times to relax as you go. Then top it and bake. It probably won't be as thin and floppy as that template but it will still be good.
Or get a bag of ready-to-go pizza dough, which many supermarkets carry.
TomP
Actually, I'm not overly conversant with US pizza joints...I did wonder about specifying this, but I wondered if I might get interesting local variants if I didn't.
I'm thinking UK though. Maybe somewhere that sells just pizza, but often it's somewhere that also does kebabs, curries, maybe chicken...
Flat and greasy isn't quite as much of a thing here; there's a chewy breadiness that's often apparent though. Unremarkable hydration is probably right, and I'd imagine there's some fat and sugar (or maybe diax) in there too. They're often baked on a sort of steel slatted conveyor-belt thing, implying heat from above, so maybe the grill (i.e. broiler) is worth bringing into play.
You want a pizza stone or baking steel underneath, and possibly an overhead broiler element, though you can still crank out a decent pizza without one. It all depends on what you are willing to settle for. What pizza qualities are you looking for, aside from a certain chewy breadiness?
There's a flavour and texture to one of those bases that's quite particular, I guess, althougho it's a while since I've have pizza that I didn't make! The texture is chewier, but flavour is...well it just tastes like takeaway pizza!
I'll have a crack at making a sweeter, richer dough, and leave it quite thick, and see how it goes...
Google Chicago deep dish pizza recipe if you want it thick. It's completely different than a New York thin pizza. As far as regular pizza goes, I either cook outside on my Ooni pizza oven, or I Heat the stone in my inside oven to 500° for about 20 minutes before throwing a pizza on it. Remember what they say, pizzas like sex, even when it's bad it's good!