Pizza Success!

So I had another go at making pizza – my baking challenge for this year. Last month’s effort was a big fail – the pizzas stuck to the new pans I had bought and the crust did not taste good at all. So this month, I rolled it back a little.

I went back to my old standard pizza crust recipe, which is from a dorky little pizza cookbook I bought in the late 1990s, called Pizza Pizzazz: Basic to Gourmet. The only change I made to the recipe was trading out half of the all-purpose flour for 00 pizza flour. Before I baked the real pizzas I took a little of the dough and made mini-pizza to test out two methods for keeping them from sticking. I baked one on parchment paper on the pan and for the other I lightly oiled the pan. Both methods worked great! Which is nice – I have options. I figured out my timing by keeping a really close watch on them and noted the times – 10 minutes of baking for just the crusts, then put on the sauce and cheese and toppings, and 5 minutes more. And they came out just great!

There were three – the other two were gone before I could get my phone out. As you can see, I don’t do great making them round, but I am OK with them a little blobby. Maybe that is something I will work toward. Maybe not. We shall see.

I also made a cheesecake at DH’s request. He wanted one with a blueberry swirl. So I made just the regular Philly three step cheesecake and marbled in some blueberry pie filling. It too turned out pretty well! I did do a variation here too – I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese. I have found there isn’t a lot of different between full fat and 1/3 less, but if you go lower fat than that it starts tasting weird.

This likewise was half gone before I remembered to take a picture. Anyway. It was minimal fuss and tasted good.

Do you have a favorite kind of pizza to bake or just to eat? Do tell!