Quarantine Cooking: Pepperoni Pizza, Hawaiian Pizza, and Margherita

I'm still striving to bake a better pizza. I took the remaining frozen dough balls which shrunk down to flat disks. Worrisome. But then bubbles in the dough emerged as it thawed, and I then felt reassured. 

In the meantime, while the dough was rising, I arranged a lily from the garden in a vase.

And sewed a mask.

In the evening, I pressed and stretched a dough ball onto the pizza pan with holes. I carefully spread pizza sauce to the edges of the pie.

And then sprinkled grated low-moisture, partially skim mozzarella followed by a layer of pepperoni slices.

Lastly a another layer of Provolone and more mozzarella so that the pepperoni would not burn or get too crisp.

I've had my stove for just a couple years and am learning that it gets hotter than my previous stove. My oven has a divider with features to bake convection, bake without convention, roast and broil. I had my cast iron round pan in the preheating oven at the roast setting for 480 degrees for at least an hour. However, five minutes into the baking, I was dismayed by the golden browning already bubbling on the pie, and so I removed the cast iron so that hot air would circulate under and through my holey pizza pan. I'm go experiment next time by using the lower instead of the upper oven. I saved the pizza from burning, but the crust was still too underdone for my liking even though it's super thin. Hubs liked the pizza though. While I was serving him this pizza, I had started rolling the dough on the still hot cast iron. Wow was that difficult. I then parbaked the crust on the cast iron before removing the crust after 5 minutes and then spread sauce on it. Definitely, New York style in that you could fold it in half to eat except it was such a limp crust that you would end up with sauce and hot cheese and meat in your lap if you tried.

I had some leftover pineapple from a pineapple cooler I made that ironically I had opened the can with the intention of making a Hawaiian pizza. I also had some leftover Irish bacon. I love love love Margherita, and so that was the other half of my personal pizza. I like to lay the fresh basil leaves on top of the bubbling cheese fresh out of the oven.

I like this resulting parbaked crust better (and the toppings were fabulously delicious) though it's still not my desired final bake. Try try try again.