Dough
Dough is the key to great pizza. You can make your own, but it takes 24 hrs to create decent dough that stretches well. The easiest approach is to purchase dough. Many pizza shops will sell you dough, and some stores have pre-made dough. As soon as you get the dough, Form it into a ball, stretching the outer surface around the ball. It is best if the dough is allowed to warm up before stretching. As a very general rule, 300g of dough will make a 12”pie.

Cheese

Use any cheese you want. Mozzarella is the most popular, but in some areas of the country provolone is used exclusively. Grate, crumble, or dice your own. Pre-shredded cheese has additives to keep it from molding and from clumping; check the ingredients and you will see cellulose. Yummy! If you are going to use any type of blue cheese, use it sparingly. Fresh mozzarella works well although it does have a higher moisture content; tear it into pieces or just slice it, don't try to grate it.

Toppings
Use high-quality toppings. Get good sausage, thick bacon, ripe tomatoes etc. Don’t use canned olives or mushrooms...Ever!

*** Pre-cook*** toppings that have significant grease or

water content. This includes mushrooms, sausage, peppers, onion, bacon etc.. This prevents a soggy pizza and limp crust. Precooking also allows you to add extra flavor like balsamic vinegar added to sautéed peppers, or Worcester sauce to mushrooms. Get creative. If you use seafood items like scallops, shrimp, salmon chunks ( see picture) don't precook them.

Pre-cook sausage low and slow to retain moisture and flavor

Lamb and fresh olives can make a great Greek pizza. Good ingredients can be boosted to become real stars.

Stretch the dough
Put a 1/2cup of flour on the wooden pizza peel. Put the dough ball on the flour and press down in the middle of the ball with fingertips. At no point should you touch the outer1/2” of the rim. There are many techniques to stretching the dough. Check out Youtube. Once you are done, lay the dough down, making sure there is plenty of flour to keep it from sticking. The easiest method is to put the pizza on a pizza screen, since you can cook the pie without having to slide it off. Pictured below is a stretched dough on a screen. It was very elastic dough that was difficult to use but irregular crust actually looks better when finished. The screen is great because it makes it much easier to load and remove from the Pizza oven.

Here is a good video on stretching dough

Sauce it.
If you use tomato sauce, it makes sense to cook it done a little to get rid of water. Be careful not to go too heavy on the sauce when you are putting it on. Keep it very light in the

middle to avoid a sogfest.

Cheese it
Heavier near the rim, because it will tend to flow towards the center

Top It
Limit the toppings to two items. The tendency is to add a boatload of toppings which makes it impossible to taste the full character of each item. If somebody takes a bite with

their eyes closed, they should be able to name the pizza. Items that can roll, like meat balls, can be cut in half. Don't over do everything. Great toppings don't need to be in a giant pile. In the pic we have fresh Mozzarella, home-made ricotta, slow roasted local sausage, and a few canned whole tomatoes

For Appetizers you can make log pies so the slices are easier to handle. The uncut pie has smoked pork and was finished with a little smokey chipotle sauce. The cut i.e. has sausage and shows how how can arrange toppings to make sure each slice has the primary topping on it.

Cook it. See Blackstone Instructions

Finish it
Slide it off onto a cooling rack. Add fresh basil, and a touch of salt. Larger toppings can be jazzed up with hot sauce or with sauces that would have burned in the oven. White

pizzas can be finished with a little garlic olive oil