Cast Iron Pizza From Scratch

Pizza is a huge weakness of mine.  Well, anything with a ton of cheese is a weakness of mine, but pizza is definitely one of my favorites.  Unfortunately for all of us, pizza is not healthy, so it's not something I eat often.  When I do indulge though, I go all out with the toppings.  I used to always order a veggie pizza with sausage and I would get the weirdest looks.  The truth is, I like veggies, but I also like meat!  What's wrong with that?  Ryan is a huge carnivore, so when we make pizzas together, we usually skip the veggies and just go for the meats.  When you're making pizzas at home, your veggies can make your pizza soggy and watery, so an easy fix is just to leave them off.  And maybe make a side salad if you're feeling guilty.

Alright, so there are some people who eat cauliflower or zucchini crust and say it's just as good, but I'm going to tell you now that they're just plain wrong.  I like a thick, bubbly crust and you just can't get that from veggies.  Yes, I've eaten a cauliflower crust pizza.  In fact, I even posted a recipe for a zucchini crust pizza on the original version of The Skinnie Foodie.  Don't get me wrong, they're still tasty and I have nothing against them, I just don't think you can compare them to a true dough crust pizza.

So if you're in the mood for a TRUE pizza with fluffy, yummy, real dough crust, hang in there and follow this recipe.  I stole this recipe from Buzzfeed's Tasty 101 videos (available on Hulu) and cut it in 1/2 because the recipe made dough for 4 pizzas.  I think having 4 pizza doughs laying around sounds dangerous, so I opted for 2.

Total Time: 27 Hours - includes 24 hours rise time
Servings: 2 large pizzas (so 2 servings? JK you should not attempt to eat a whole pizza, as much as you may want to)

Ingredients:
For the dough:
1 1/4 cups warm water
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp yeast
3 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
3 tbs olive oil

My choice of toppings:
pizza sauce
Daiya mozarella (almond based vegan cheese)
salami
black forest ham
pepperoni
fresh garlic, minced
fresh basil (to top)

Instructions:

1. Mix water, sugar, and yeast and stir to combine and let sit for 5 minutes.  You should see the mixture start to froth up.
2. Add flour, salt, and olive oil to large bowl and mix until combined.
3. Add the water and yeast mixture to the flour and stir until fully incorporated.
4. Dump the dough out onto a floured cutting board and knead for about 10 minutes.  The dough should be soft and springy and should puff back up when poked.
5. Shape your dough into a ball by spinning it clockwise on the cutting board while pulling towards you.
6. Oil a large bowl and add the dough mixture.  Coat the top of the dough ball with oil as well.
7. Let rise for 24 hours.  This is the key to getting a super bubbly, soft crust.
8. Once the dough has risen, flour a cutting board and knead for another minute or two.  Re-shape and cut into 2 even pieces.  If only making one pizza, you can refrigerate or freeze the other section of dough.
9. Let dough rise for 1 more hour or until room temperature.
10. Heat oven to 500° with a cast iron pan inside.
11. Stretch dough out into pizza shape.  You want to just gently push the dough out and stretch it until it's the size of your cast iron pan. Don't try to get fancy and toss it in the air.  You'll probably end up dropping it.
12. Place dough in the cast iron pan, topping with sauce, cheese, and desired toppings.
13. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the crust is brown on the bottom and lightly golden brown around the edges.
14. Allow pizza to cool for 10 minutes on a cooling rack before digging in!  The roof of your mouth will thank me for this.

Here's what the dough should look like after it's risen.  When you poke it, it should puff back up fairly quickly (notice the poke marks in the dough).

Once you've stretched out your dough, place it in the cast iron pan and cover in sauce.

Top generously with cheese and any other toppings you like.

The final result:

Here's how well the cast iron cooks the pizza crust.  The bottom is perfectly crispy while it stays light and fluffy.  

Look at how amazingly fluffy that crust is!  So good that I stopped eating mid-way through the slice to take a picture of it.  So I think that's saying something.

I can't get over how tasty this pizza was.  It was the best homemade pizza I've ever had and it's 100% because of the crust.  I know letting a dough rise for 24 hours seems like overkill, but I guarantee you, you'll be happy you did.  Happy Baking!