Marjorie Rich, Nutrition Expert: Pizza Perfection

Round 1, Pizza 1

My husband loves pizza and rarely complains about any style crust. On the other hand, I am a total crust snob. Inspired by a TV show where they were making Naples style pizza, I started researching.

Round 1, pizza 2

I read several articles on Cold Fermented Pizza Dough. Here's the link to the recipe and directions that I mostly followed (I used 4g yeast). After reading several articles, one secret is the timing. The dough must be made 3-5 days before use. I did Round 1 (pictures above) on day 3, round 2 (pictures below) on day 4.

Secret # 2 is heat. Pizza ovens are 900 F. My oven maxes out at 550. I followed suggestions and bought a pizza stone, bringing it to heat from a cold oven. Middle rack (some instructions say top rack). I tried using the broiler on round 1, but it turned off the oven heat, so didn't do that round 2

Minute 6 of baking pizza 1 of round 2 I heard a bang. The pizza stone broke.

Undeterred, here's the hubby's pizza, perfect at 7 minutes. He added pineapple after the photo.

I probably overloaded the cheese by Neapolitan standards. Which prevented as much rise in the dough at the center.

By the 4th pizza, I did get some bubbles in the center.

Amazing bubbles on the edges.

I also found that it helped to roll out the crusts as much as they would go without bouncing back to a smaller size. Then I let them sit for 10 minutes and rolled again, which increased the size and thinned out the crust.