Pan Pizza

For lunch on Saturday, I tried out another recipe from The Best of America's Test Kitchen 2007, which I recently picked up at Half-Price Books. The recipe in question originally appeared in a 2006 issue of Cook's Country:  Pepperoni Pan Pizza.   Thankfully, it went a lot better than had the biscuits and gravy I'd attempted for breakfast.

The recipe for the dough makes enough for two pizzas.   I decided to just go ahead and use my favorite canned pizza sauce, Dei Fratelli, rather than going with the sauce recipe included in the Cook's Country article or with one of my own.  I topped one of the pizzas with just pepperoni, the other with pepperoni and mushrooms.  We'd picked up the pepperoni and mozzarella a couple days earlier during our most recent stop at Graziano Bros. Grocery.

The recipe was pretty straight-forward, and while it did take awhile for the dough to go through two rounds of rising (one in the pan), I was able to use the time to do prep for other cooking, and to get the pepperoni ready.  As it turns out, this was one occasion in which I was ahead of the fine America's Test Kitchen folks.  I have a trick for keeping a lot of grease from pepperoni from ending up on the pizza, and they featured exactly the same trick in the article.  It's pretty easy, really... put a couple layers of paper towels on a plate, arrange the pepperoni slices on the paper towels, cover with another layer of paper towels and microwave the pepperoni for 30 seconds. 

After

Before

As you can see in the second photo, this quick and easy step takes away a lot of grease, and I have never found it to hurt the flavor of the pepperoni or the finished pizza.

I was quite pleased with how the pizza turned out. The crust was nice and crispy on the bottom without having burned, and it had a satisfying crunch to it without being dried out.


Ready to cook

Fresh out of the oven

The toppings were great, of course, but I knew that would be the case.  Still, toppings alone do not make a good pizza.  Pan pizza is about the crust, and this recipe came through. 


The pizza made for a great lunch, and the leftovers were so good, I finished them off on Sunday, having some for breakfast and the rest for lunch.  Leftover pizza for breakfast... that sort of reminds me of my college days, save that the pizza in this case was a lot better than what I typically got back then. 


The next morning:  Good to the last slice!