re: What's the key to good home made pizza?

Get that mini wood fired oven!

Uuni 2

I bought a cast-iron pizza pan like this one (there are cheaper versions on amazon now):

Amazon Link

I preheat the oven to as hot as it will get,and then about 5-10 minutes before I put the pies in the oven I put the cast iron pan on the stovetop on high...it gets pretty hot pretty quickly (you do deal with hot spots but that's OK) and then throw it into the oven when you are ready to cook pies.

Get a pizza peel! I've got a plastic one and use cornmeal on the bottom to keep the dough from sticking. Lots of cornmeal. Gives the pizza a nice crunch and is dirt cheap.


Our local pizzeria uses Stanislaus pizza sauce, which I love, so I bought a case of it online and then freeze it in quart bags when I open a can:



I live in the middle of nowhere and there's an Amish/Mennonite grocery store that gets all kinds of weird "almost-expired" stuff all the time and they had whole milk mozzarella for dirt cheap (as in 5 pounds for $7 dirt cheap). It makes a big difference when you use whole milk mozzarella vs. partial-skim which is all we have in grocery stores around here.

Dough is a big issue for me too. I have used Sam's Club frozen dough balls for years, which are easy and cheap (one dough ball is about $1 and you can easily get a couple of pizzas from that) but on the advice of folks here I tried the Lahey no-knead dough recently. The first time I didn't use enough water and it wasn't great, but last week I tried it and it was the best I'd ever made.

If you like thicker crust pizza, use a cast-iron skillet...do some experimenting on how much dough you need (weigh it each time) until you figure out how much you can use without it being undercooked.

Finally, if you want something a little different, whip up a little alfredo sauce, add some grilled chicken, a can of artichokes, a bit of bacon, mozzarella, spinach and red pepper and you've got a fantastic pizza. That's currently our favorite.