In reply to Emily Blake.
I accidentally made this in a 10” rather than 12” pan. It did cook all the way through but was very, very thick and doughy. So: not a total disaster, no one’s dinner was ruined, but I definitely don’t recommend!
version ai :
Today is a big day, my friends. Today, I am giving you a recipe for simple crispy pan pizza that I am actually happy with. This is huge, I know. It’s been a long road, mostly because I love pizza, I love eating pizza, and yet I rarely love the results when I try to make it at home.
In the past, I’ve shared a couple of pizza recipes: a simple Neapolitan-ish dough that is very good but it’s best if you have a wood-fired oven and I don’t, and then a potato pizza which used a store-bought dough that I doctored up a little. My biggest issue with pizza in the home oven, in general, is getting the crust to be anything more than just a little limp, a little floppy, just not a crispy, cheesy, delightful situation… satisfying enough. So, over the past decade and change, I mostly just made it for other people because the expectation was lower and I’d still get to eat it. I make things for other people all the time just to fulfill some primal craving, don’t you?
So, what changed? J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Crispy Pan Pizza. Kenji’s original recipe uses a super hydrated, no-knead dough that you ferment in your fridge for days. It gets stretched into a sheet pan and baked in an extremely hot oven until puffy and crispy-bottomed, exactly what I’ve always craved. His recipe yields an exceptional pizza, one I’ve made for years. This one here is a little bit of a streamlined variation: I use a dough (his New York Style Dough) that only needs an hour of active proofing on the counter, 10 to 15 minutes of rest, then it’s ready to go. You get a similarly crispy bottom and fluffy interior but with a fraction of the work.
But this is the important bit: whether you’re making the long-ferment or the short-ferment version, the trick is to get the dough into the pan (a regular 9×13-inch baking pan, lightly oiled), covered, and let it hang out in the fridge for a couple hours up to overnight, if you can. It helps the dough relax so that you can stretch it into the corners of the pan easily and it absolutely guarantees that crispy bottom. It really does make all the difference!
I’ve used this with my New York-style pizza dough recipe (you’ll need 2/3 of a batch for this), the best pizza dough recipe (you’ll need half a batch), and I’m sure it would work with most pizza dough recipes out there. You’ll want 15 to 16 ounces of dough, which is usually one dough ball from the store, or one pizza’s worth from your home kitchen. From there, your toppings are your choice. We went classic: a tomato sauce I made from the best canned tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, but sometimes we go with a thinner layer of sauce and some blanched broccoli rabe, or maybe a simple white pizza. This is really versatile; it just gives you the perfect crispy, chewy base.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat some pizza. Happy Friday!
Yields: one 9×13-inch pizza
Prep time: 20 minutes, plus 1 to 2 hours proofing and 2 to 24 hours cold-ferment
Cook time: 18 to 20 minutes
