Cast Iron Pan Pizza

hey everybody it's me Chris I'm back over here in the kitchen you know I'd love to make pizza in fact when I go to the restaurant supply store i buy 50-pound bag of the double zero flour that's how much pizza i make it all one of the things that frustrates me is always the challenge of getting that crispy crust like you see in the pizza burrito so today I'm going to show you a new technique I started using that really achieves that and gives you a nice thick sicilian-style crust and it's using a cast iron pan so let me show you my ingredients here I got my homemade pizza dough here you can see it's nice and risen you can get the recipe on my youtube channel and this is if you if you're using the for cup recipe you would divide that in half and I'll give you two of the right size dough balls if you double it up and use the eighth cup recipe and make a big batch you'll get four large pizzas I got my extra virgin olive oil of course I got some thick-cut mozzarella I want this to be really cheesy substantial pizza I don't know a ricotta some leftover marinara sauce you can get that recipe also if you watched my video this is just some sausage I I took it out of the casing and add some fennel seed and you can if you want to see how I do that you can look at my sausage pizza video I got some pickle Reno cheese and these are the tools these are the pan so that I will use and there's two types of the cast-iron pan the traditional one is this heavy one you see here with the short heavy handle but they also make a lot of different kinds like this one here it has a nice long handle it's a little bit lighter weight so both work great and they're really don't last it forever and they're really cheap now you can probably get them for like 20 bucks online so first thing I'm gonna do I'm just gonna heat this pan up very quickly I just want to get warm to help stretch the dough so literally turn on the induction burner for about 40 seconds just all right so my pan is warm it's it's not hot but just warm took it off the heat and I'm gonna put the dough down and you want to add a generous at least a tablespoon to two tablespoons of olive what it's gonna help you not only get a nice crispy crust I'll help you stretch the dough I'm just gonna turn this out right into the pan and I'm going to start to press and the most important thing here it doesn't have to be perfect circle but you want it to be even okay so start to press and then I'll flip it over and you can see there's a nice coating of olive oil on both sides of the dough and continue to press and stretch this out and this isn't gonna stretch all the way for you the first time alright and that's part of the reason we warmed up the pan first that's going to help the dough to relax but you want to press it with your fingers it's like making a focaccia as best you can and again paying attention to the fact that you want it to be all the same even thickness and then at this point you're gonna cover it with a towel and let it rest for at least 10 minutes I so let that don't relax for about 10 minutes and no longer you leave it the easier it'll be to finish stretching so I'm gonna take my towel off and I'm gonna continue to stretch and we basically want to try and get it go all the way up to the sides and remember the key is to make it even you don't want a thin part and then a really thick part that doesn't cook all the way through so I'm gonna push this right to the edge and that looks pretty good and I'm gonna start to put down my cheese and again this is really thick slices I want a cheesy heavy pizza and I'll start to go around the edge first and fill the whole pie all right so this looks pretty good just fill in the last couple pieces and if you have some extra and go around and fill some holes and you can they're gonna let it touch the edge of the pan to that'll get nice and crispy and charred for you be nice cheesy crust and the next step is very important before we put the toppings on the pizza I'm gonna put it on to the burner and turn the power on to medium heat before I apply the toppings and I'm just gonna press in here and stretch the crust up the sides a little bit more so now this this pizza the crust is going to start to cook from the bottom up and it's also going to help bring the pan to temperature I had my oven preheated to 500 degrees but I'm also gonna have a really nice hot pan going in and it's gonna make for a really nice crispy crust so I'm gonna put my toppings I'm gonna put the ricotta first and I'll just spread it around so nice dollops ricotta [Applause] a couple more I think that's good I'll put the sausage down next that looks great and now while I'm doing this I'm just looking for you'll see in one of these spots over here just some smokes gonna start coming up that's gonna let me know that it's ready to go in the oven because the bottom will be starting to cook I'm going to put the pecorino cheese I think that's good and now for this pizza we're gonna put the sauce on top so I'm just gonna drizzle it around just like this but I can see my my dough starting don't push up starting to move a little bit I know that it's starting to cook on the bottom yet so I'm gonna leave this to cook until it starts to smoke out the side I'll give it about five minutes you can see that there's some smoke starting to come out from underneath the dough and I could see it starting to bubble up so this is ready to go in the oven I'm gonna shut the power off here I'm gonna put this in the 500 degree oven and it's gonna bake about 15 20 minutes depends on how well done you like it so it's been 20 22 minutes I think my pizza's done I'm gonna grab it out of the oven and you've got to make sure especially with cast iron do not forget to put on an oven mitt if you grab that pan with your bare hand you won't be going to the hospital so it's what I do usually if I'm not using the stovetop I'll take the oven mitt and I'll put it on top of the stove I leave it hanging off the edge so I know that I can't forget and grab the hot pan so let me go grab my pizza alright so there we go looks great and what I want to do is just go around the edge with a butter knife make sure it's not stuck to the pan before I take now you can see I got some of the charred edges here and that's where the cheese was hanging over the end that's not burned that's gonna be really really tasty and most importantly you could see how crunchy this crust is gonna be and you could see the bottom it's gonna be a really crunchy and delicious pizza so what I want to do now before I try this I like to clean my cast iron while it's still hot and what I'll do is run it under cold water and that will basically help to lift all the crusties that get stuck to it I'll use a steel wool to wipe it out and scrub it and then I'll quickly bring it over to a towel I'll set it on a towel and dry it and at that point I'm going to use some canola oil to season the pan and wipe it out clean and that that coat of oil is what protects the cast iron and if you do that each time these things should last you about a hundred years so I'm going to clean the pan and we'll come back and we'll try this all right so my pan is clean you can see it's nice and shiny it's got a nice coating of the oil on there and it's ready to be put away and now it's time to cut this pizza we can hear the crunch there and you can see the inside is nice and cooked give this a bite really really delicious and I gotta say I think I'm all the different ways of meat pizza this might be my new favorite way it's so crunchy it's just very very similar to what you would get in the pizza array yourself you gotta try my cast-iron pan method for making pizza go on and look for me on YouTube Chris Smith under the description D Giovanna family recipes thanks for watching the video

Channel: Christopher Smith

Views: 34,315

Rating: 4.8326797 out of 5

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Id: lBZrFV3BZi4

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2017