Claire Makes Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

it really provides like wonderful heat retention and heat distribution when you're trying to get something crisp I feel like I just black out what I say about that right and I'd like to talk a lot about like what are you having for dinner tonight or what do you make for dinner last night try to keep it fresh get some inspiration and Brad famously makes a wonderful cast-iron pizza so I'm going to show you this recipe inspired by the great pizzas that Brad makes at home one thing I like mother's recipe is it really allows you to achieve a wonderful like crisp crust on the bottom without needing a pizza stone or like an oven that goes up to like 600 degrees what I like about it is it uses a lot of ingredients that are kind of like ready to go and that you can buy at this store so one of those is pizza dough so this is 12 ounces which is the right amount of dough for a large cast-iron skillet the first thing I'm gonna do is start to stretch this it's when it's room temperature it's much easier to stretch so if you're trying to stretch it and it's bringing back just let it sit on your counter a little bit longer and I'll dit because I don't want to add flour it's gonna go into an already oiled skillet so I'm stretching this to like a 10-inch round it could be a little bit bigger than 10 inches because it will start to shrink back a bit and I'm leaving this ring around the outside where it's a little bit thicker so that's gonna be that edge of crust all right so this is going to be a fennel topped pizza so I have Italian sausage which is seasoned with fennel seeds and then some fresh fennel so right here it's Finley sliced this was done on a mandolin you can just go in with a knife so with toppings that are raw like the fennel thinly sliced is really ideal because you want it to be able to cook in the oven in a pretty brief period of time another important thing to mention I have my oven on 475 with a rack on the very very top so we're gonna cook this on the top rack and take advantage of the way that the heat circulates in the oven so the heat is gonna be radiating down from the from the top of the oven directly onto the pizza so we're gonna be cooking it from underneath in the cast-iron and from the top at the same time and that's gonna kind of mimic the way like an actual pizza oven works that looks good so I left myself a little bit of wiggle room in case the press wants to shrink back so just a bit us and try out I'm going to cover it with some plastic while I start to build my toppings on the stove okay just lightly covered now here my toppings I have my fresh fennel some low moisture mozzarella just from the store that was grated on the large holes of a box grater jarred marinara just a good quality marinara sauce this is Rao's brand which I really like kosher salt a little extra olive oil and some garlic so the main chopping though is Italian sausage it's a half a pound which is about two links and I'm gonna get this going in the same cast-iron skillet that we're going to use for the pizza with a raw topping like sausage we want to cook at first because I want to make sure it's fully cooked before it goes into the oven just in case it doesn't cook through all the way and also I wanted to release the moisture now rather than on top of the pizza which might make it soggy this is sweet Italian sausage that was removed from the casings you could you spicy Italian or any other kind of like raw pork sausage even Merguez something like that I develop this recipe so these are the companies that I like but if you have like tried-and-true pizza toppings that you love just use those at home pepperoni is great I don't know what are what do people put on heat so Chris what do people put on pizza at home pepperoni I got that one we got cheese Brad probably puts green bell pepper Brad you know what Brad loves to do Brad loves to put a drizzle of honey at the end yeah that hot honey you have a nice idea I mean obviously like sausage is awesome yeah this one is sausage and fennel what else is like truly transcendent though I'm not above a Hawaiian pie oh I'm sorry I can't I really not sorry I really don't I'm in the like don't you like other people beyond this category but I just can't do it I can't do that Hawaii what it's like pineapple good how many good where's the problem all right teach his own I hear ya okay so pan is preheated I can feel it's pretty hot you just have a tablespoon oil like there's a decent amount of fat in this recipe we're gonna add oil to the top before and after baking this oil is really just to get the sausage going oil facilitates heat transfer one of the keys here too is that we're not going to define the skillet after we take out the sausage because it's gonna this is the fat that's in the bottom of the pan that is going to help crisp and almost like fry the bottom of the crust as it cooks trying to break it up into smaller pieces okay so I want to take the sausage out of the pan and leave the fat behind so using a slotted spoon and the idea is that the heat and the pan is gonna start to cook the bottom of the crust you know you kinda have to lay down in one shot it's a little tricky there's a slight fizzle if you don't if you can hear that get my mic down there first I'm gonna do is just season the whole surface of the dough lightly just kosher salt now going with my marinara this is a liquidy ingredient so you don't want to add too much I kind of like when the sauce goes right up to the edge now the low moisture mozzarella again like a nice even coating and here's one thing I like to do maybe yeah maybe a little bit of cheese falls along the outside of the crust where the cheese hits the pan it kind of does that like crispy crunchy like caramelized golden brown cheese thing which is really really nice I can hear it sizzling so not a ton of cheese again I don't want a water log the dough now fennel so one reason why I'm gonna drizzle olive oil over this before I bake it is because I want that fennel to get a little bit of oil on it so that it doesn't just dry out as it roasts it kind of cooks the fennel shrinks a lot in the oven so even though it looks like a lot and you pull it out it'll have you know much less coverage same thing with the garlic I want to make sure that it gets a sprinkling of oil so this is very very thinly sliced garlic it's three cloves I'm a garlic lover so and I like that kind of almost like half cooked garlic flavor like there's still a little bit of the raw bite on the pizza at the end but if you don't like a storm of garlic flavor or you just don't like our look at all you can leave it off and now the sausage so there's any large pieces I'm just gonna crumble them a little bit smaller and now two tablespoons of olive oil really even drizzle all the way around and get the top of the crust that ring around the outside so I want to pre crisp the bottom of the crust before I put it in the oven the crust went in to a hot pan so it started to cook and I want to just take a look at if there's any color on the bottom it's taken on just the lightest golden color I want to put it back on the heat to get even more browning before I put it in the oven so I'm gonna bring it back over to the stove so I'm putting it on medium medium-low so what's happening here is really the cast iron is acting like a pizza stone wood or a baking steel this is why cooking cast iron is so great because it really provides like wonderful heat retention and heat distribution when you're trying to get something crisp all right I'm looking golden brown on the bottom so it's gonna go in until the top has nice browning you'll see like great bubbling around the crust the topics are cooked so it should be like in the range of 10 to 14 minutes again depending on how hot your oven is this is really heavy somebody whose two hands alright ok I just checked on the pizza it's been in there about 11 minutes it's looking done so I'm gonna pull it out of the oven carefully this is hot so it's looking great really nice browning all around the edge hear me try to like lift the edge nice and crispy bottom looks beautiful so I'm gonna bring it over here it has to cool it's burning hot right now so I'm just loosening it from the bottom hopefully your cast iron has a nice layer of seasoning so that it's nothing sticks but you know the the crust is well browned so that also means that will release from the bottom what I'm really loosening is the bits of baked on cheese I'm gonna transfer it to my cutting board to rest for a bit and then I'm gonna finish it you can see how crisp it is I can lift the whole thing out that's the beauty of cast iron so I'm gonna finish it with some red pepper flakes we use sweet Italian sausage so there's not those no heat here so I like some red pepper flakes and I don't want to these are the topping so I don't want to bake I don't want to burn the red pepper flakes have some fresh basil here I like that fresh flavor then just an extra very light sprinkling of salt and fresh olive oil because I like the kind of bright acidity that that adds but just a little bit it's for you know a fair amount of fat on here you can see how much the fennel really shrunk as it cooked so I think there's really nice proportions of toppings on here still still with a nice crisp crust on the bottom so I'm gonna cut it this is a great dinner for four people I think while it's baking you know you have about 10 or 15 minutes you can mix up just a salad which is all you really need the crust is fully baked through so has a nice sort of fluffy texture on top of that crisp layer on the bottom but I do want to point out here on the side this nice little area where the cheese crispy and brown already try it yeah hmm really good for amount of salt you know you have that nice richness from like olive oil and cheese but it's not soggy really good balance the pieces of sausage got nice and crispy in the oven mmm I love the flavor of the fennel seed plus the fresh fennel you can get everything at the store on your way home preheat the oven everything is prepped in the amount of time it takes for the oven to heat up and in you know half an hour 45 minutes you have everything done quick salad just give it a mix while the pizzas in the oven and great weeknight dinner so thanks to Brad for wonderful inspiration definitely worth it to invest in a cast-iron skillet they're not they're not expensive so versatile hope you enjoyed this Brad was here to try those yeah Brad's and son rides in Park City Utah

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 2,783,607

Keywords: test kitchen, cast iron, pizza recipe, from the test kitchen, claire, cast iron pizza, claire makes pizza, claire saffitz, claire makes, claire bon appetit, claire test kitchen, how to make cast iron pizza, cast iron pizza recipe, make pizza, making pizza, make cast iron pizza, how to make pizza, cast iron pizza bon appetit, cast iron pan pizza, cast iron skillet pizza, pizza in cast iron skillet, pizza cast iron, pizza cast iron skillet, claire pizza, food, bon appetit

Id: JESaD6tqXiQ

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 26 2019