Pizza Night or the Search for the Perfect Crust

If you follow this blog at all you know we like to make pizza at home. It's a fun way to play with different flavor combinations or use up small amounts of things in the fridge. That has lead us to a search for the perfect crust for homemade pizza. I'm embarrassed to say when we first started making pizza at home we used the crust that came in a tube from the grocery store. It was quick & easy but nothing like real pizza crust, more like pizza toppings on bread. So, we started trying lots of different recipes we found around the web.

Our go-to crust for a long time as been this recipe from Wisebread. It was pretty easy to make though, you have to remember to get it rising 2 hours before dinner. We've found the recipe calls for way too much liquid & cut it down by a third. It's not very easy to work with when it came to making the pizza, very hard to spread out. It is an easy recipe to play with flavor-wise though, we've done a honey wheat version & a wheat bran version as well as adding different flavorings like roasted garlic. A good crust but almost too crispy (or some might say hard).

Then we tried the Easy-At-Home Pizza Dough from Serious Eats. Talk about a basic dough, it doesn't even have olive oil in it. It needs to be made 3 - 24 hours before you plan on using it. We had to press it out very thin to get the size pizzas the recipe said it made. It got quite crispy & even stayed crisp with a good drizzle of balsamic on it. The texture was good, especially at the edge (my favorite part) but, it was boring on the flavor front.

This week we tried the New York Style Pizza also from Serious Eats. This recipe called for you to make the dough in a food processor 24 hours up to 5 days before using. Apparently, using a food processor keeps the dough from over-oxidizing which affects flavor. I did 2/3 of the recipe & I want to know how big a food processor the author had! I thought even this reduced amount was going to blow out the motor on mine. I ended up having to knead it a lot more than the 1 or 2 times the recipe called for (probably adding more of that evil oxygen). The end result though, was a dough that was a delight to work with once its time to make your pizza, so easy to get that thin crust we like. It cooked up a little more bread-like than cracker crisp still, it stood up fine to the toppings. It had a nice flavor which I think would only get better if we'd left it in the fridge for more than one day. Matt liked the way the crust had air pockets like a lot of the crust you get out. This my be the winning crust so far though I'll need a bigger food processor to make it again.

Maybe it's time to take what I've learned from all the crusts we've tried & create my own "perfect" crust recipe. Do you have a favorite pizza crust recipe? Share it with us in the comments & tell us why it's your favorite.

Pizza's pictured above Apricot, Red Pepper & Prosciutto on Wisebread Crust, Sausage & Grape on Easy-At-Home Crust and this week's Salami, Mushroom, Red Pepper & Smoked Mozzarella on New York Style Crust.

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