Pizza Night for Maren

Okay, so you may all begin to think that I am obsessed with pizza, and maybe I am. After my post about pizza, my daughter, Maren, was so jealous I promised to re-create the pizza when she came home for Spring Break. In the meantime, I was picking the brains of friends and co-workers on how they make pizza. One of the problems I was encountering was crust that was not so crispy in the middle...great tasting but I was lusting after that crispy, crunchy satisfaction one gets from a great crust. I have a pizza stone but the problem was, how do I get the pizza dough onto a hot pizza stone? I would just form the pizza on the stone and cook it but knew there had to be a better way. One of my co-workers said she uses parchment paper to form the pizza dough and then it is relatively simple to transfer it to the hot pizza stone. Brilliant! Another friend suggested I par-bake the dough before adding the toppings and, as we all know, with pizza, less is more. Don, my husband, and I did a trial run. We put the pizza stone into the oven at 450 degrees F. We formed the dough on the parchment paper and transferred it to the pre-heated stone for about 4 minutes to par-bake. We removed the pizza from the oven and added the toppings; in this case, roasted red peppers, chicken basil sausage, sliced crimini mushrooms, spinach that had been chopped, fromage blanc and a drizzle of olive oil. Don suggested cranking the oven temperature up to 500 degrees F and I did. OH MY GOSH!!!! The crust was crispy and a little chewy and we were in heaven. This is the pizza you see in the picture (Maren helped me figure out how to add photos...thank you, Maren). Now we were ready to go into production when Maren arrived. Last night was the night. I couldn't decide on toppings and had so many ideas, we ended up making 3 pizzas. I guess that is why I enjoy making pizza so much...the sky is the limit, it's like a blank canvas just waiting for you to paint it with toppings and I also like to make my pizzas pretty! All pizzas started with my quick start homemade sauce (see previous posts), Pizza number one was caramelized cipollini onions (this time I added a little dried thyme), mushrooms and fromage blanc with a drizzle of olive oil. The second was roasted garlic, slow roasted tomatoes, chopped fresh basil and fresh mozzarella, sliced and drizzled with olive oil. The last (and the best) was par-boiled potato slices, prosciutto, grated raclette cheese and fresh watercress at the end, drizzled with olive oil. All pizzas received a grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano after coming out of the oven. We were in pizza heaven! Don, ever the engineer, now wants to add a pizza peel to the operation as he feels it will be much more efficient, which is probably true as we had almost every cutting board and sheet pan in use last night to transfer pizzas from the stone so the next could go on. Possibly, the addition of another stone would be helpful as well. The best part...the three of us in the kitchen, together, making passionate pizza!