Quarantine Cooking: Thin Crust (Take 2)

The last time I made pizza with supermarket dough was disastrous because I don't have a pizza peel, nor the finesse to slide a pizza into an oven on a hot surface anyway. Then my neighbor gave me four dough balls, two of which were on my counter and then in the fridge for a week and the other two in the fridge and then in the freezer. And then I took the two balls out of the fridge to rise again on my counter. There were still bubbles in the dough, and so I was ever hopeful.

I also had a one cream cheese butter dough ball in my fridge for rugelach. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough apricot preserves to finish it and opened this jar of peach jam I bought in Tennessee last summer. Hmm, there didn't seem to be a lot of summer peach in that jar, but whatevs. I've still blocks of cream cheese in my fridge. Dip? More rugelach? Cheesecake?

I had my cast iron in the oven roasting in the oven at the highest temperature for an hour. I olive oiled my holey pan and spread the dough on it. Thin like me and the hubs like. I spread jarred pizza sauce (love the oregano and fennel seed and the occasional chunks of tomato in the supermarket sauce)on to the very edges of the pie.

I sprinkled the Parmesan next and then laid a couple slices of Provolone, and then sprinkled shredded Mozzarella. And laid pepperoni slices and then more shredded Mozzarella so that the pepperoni didn't get too browned or burned. I considered the raw pie rather handsome.

The moist dough was stuck to the pan, and so I just slid the pan on top of the cast iron. After ten minutes, the top of the pie looked a bit too done, but the crust was still kind of stuck to the pan and not cooked enough for my liking. I sliced it on the holey pan and put a few slices back on top of the sizzling hot cast iron to crisp it more. My husband liked it and said good job, but I thought I could do it the next time round.

Nope. I stretched my dough way too thin in an attempt to cover the whole pizza pan with crust. I put just the crust into the oven to parbake.

Oh boy. 8 minutes was too long for such a thin crust. I also did not have enough pizza sauce to cover my Margherita.

I opened a jar of homemade marinara and sprinkled the rest of the cheese I had left--also not enough--and so I added cilegini too. The flavors were good, especially with the fresh basil leaves, but ai yi yi, the crust was too crunchy. Back to the drawing board. I should have just put the toppings on that super thin crust and baked like the pepperoni pizza. Try try try again.