I put a very small amount every so often and put on stove until it starts smoking.

#ThatsTheJoke

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My family now calls this my “Thursday Night pizza.” I just make it every Thursday night, and it’s very dependable, so everyone knows what we’re getting. This is a “California pizza” style the entire family enjoys.

If I’m making pizza on the weekend, the kids know I’m probably experimenting and futzing with the pizza oven instead of making it indoors. Sometimes that works great. Sometimes the kids find a way to get invited to dinner by a friend.

What I do instead of the original recipe is…
- I use 1 tsp of sugar rather than honey. Found the honey 1) imparted a flavor we didn’t want and 2) made the dough more complicated to judge for being done kneeding.
- After adding all the ingredients together, and mixing for about a minute, I have a 1/4C of water on hand to add until I see the dough looking right. “Right” is hard to describe. The dough is supposed to be quite wet and sticky when the mix first comes together.
- I add 1tbsp-ish of EVOO to the dough mix. We like the flavor and it seems to help add a bit of stretch.
- I let the dough hook run for 6 minutes after all the ingredients come together.
- I let it rise for a full hour.
- With my Steel, I set the rack to the 2nd from the top level. Put the steal on. Pre-heat to 550, and let it sit for at least an hour. I want everything as hot as it can be. When I put the first pizza in, things should sizzle.
- I cook for 4 minutes. Then I give it a half turn and cook another minute. Then I check color. Should be done, but sometimes it needs another 30-45 seconds.

Also, I usually double the recipe. For me, I get 6 pizzas, about 12” each, from a double recipe. Depending on how hungry the kids are, we have 1-1.5 leftover pizzas after dinner.

I included the post to the original b/c Chef John’s video showing what the dough looks like after kneading is pretty on par with what I’m looking for, but since this recipe is in volumes of water and flour instead of weights, you kind of have to eyeball things, hence my spare 1/4C of water as I mix it in the Kitchenaid. I do a lot of breads using my food scale, but again, this is the “easy Thursday night dinner” thing. I want to just throw stuff in a bowl and be done.

Also, on the topic of Cheese: Really important to use a WHOLE milk, low moisture mozzarella. Block, not pre-shredded. It makes an enormous difference. You can tell by how much my kids would would or would not eat during the pandemic when it was hard to find for a bit. Galbani is widely available here for that sort of thing. Sometimes I can’t find the blocks, but they also make the same cheese packaged as string cheese. But it’s gotta be whole milk. Part-skim sucks. Sometimes for my own pizza, I’ll mix in some strips of provolone sandwich cheese. Melts really well and just adds a little variety, but I always use at least a little low moisture, whole milk mozzarella.

John doesn’t seem to make a very thins crust on his pizza. I really hammer mine down really thin, working center->out to get a nice outer crust ring. Then I also skip the olive oil on the whole crust. I only do EVOO on the outer ring to get get some browning in my home oven.

One really easy cheat for the home oven crust is to add some sea salt sprinkled on the outer rim pre-bake. It’s a killer flavor.

Original Recipe from Wolfgang via Chef John:
https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfgang-pucks-famous-california-pizza.html

Also, I learned a bunch that kind of really got me making good pizza from this video. And when I experiment, I’m usually starting with this as a base and then tweaking as I go.

https://youtu.be/SDpCzJw2xm4

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Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

Otherwise, I agree with the above. A can of San Marzano tomatoes, seasoned to taste, makes a fine pizza sauce.