After seeing cast iron pizzas all over Instagram I knew we had to try them. Binging with Babish seems to know his stuff so we went with his recipe and it did not disappoint! We had a lot of fun making these together and letting Henry help (Leo too!)
For the pizza dough (makes two 10-inch crusts or one baking sheet crust):
16 ounces flour, plus more for work surface
2 tsp kosher salt
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
11 ounces room temperature water
Olive oil
For the tomato sauce
1 28-ounce can of peeled San Marzano tomatoes
2-3 cloves garlic
Dried oregano and basil
Red pepper flakes
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Olive oil (optional)
Additional toppings:
Natural casing pepperoni, thinly sliced
Low moisture, full fat mozzarella
Fresh basil
Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving
Cast Iron Skillet Method
Start by making your pizza dough. Combine flour, kosher salt, and active dry yeast in a big bowl.
Add room temperature water and mix with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms and no dry clumps remain.
Generously oil a medium bowl with olive oil. Put the ball of dough into the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rest for 18-24 hours.
Once rested, turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface. Cut the dough in half, as this will make 2 crusts for the cast iron skillet.
Oil the skillet with olive oil. Place the dough in the plate and gently coax the it to the edges using your fingers.
Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let rest for at least one hour or until doubled in size. Now is also the time to preheat your oven - turn it on to its max heat setting and put a pizza stone in the oven as well.
While your dough rises, make tomato sauce. Combine tomatoes, garlic cloves, oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper in a food processor or large cup for an immersion blender. Pulse a few times until smooth. Optionally, add a dash of olive oil for extra flavor.
Prepare your other toppings - I love to use natural casing pepperoni, thinly sliced, as well as low moisture (full fat) mozzarella and fresh basil.
Now that the dough is ready, top it with sauce edge to edge, then add the shredded mozzarella. Top with pepperoni and basil.
Bake for about 11-12 minutes.
Top with freshly grated Parmesan and let rest for at least 5 minutes so you don’t burn your mouth. Serve and enjoy!
Review:
Amazing!
We both agreed Henry's little pan pizza was the better overall of the two, because the dough ended up being thinner. The crust on our cast iron pizza was thick, more like a Detroit style (which Tyler loves).
These ended up cooking for around 25 minutes... far above the recipes listed time. We pulled them out and checked them 3-4 times over during that time. It was surprisingly easy to keep checking the underside of the crust to get a good idea of how it was coming along.
Note, we have a Samsung Flex Duo oven which can be split into a double oven so each pizza was in it's own separate zone. It's unclear how well that technology actually works though and we would be curious to see how it cooks with only one at a time.
We have used a ceramic pizza oven that is designed to be used on a grill and found this oven method to be much easier, cleaner, and cheaper.
Notes for next time:
Try making our own sauce. We used Classico traditional this time. The sauce worked fine, but we think a sweeter one would be better. If we are taking the time to make our own dough, we might as well perfect a sauce as well.
Thinner dough or commit to a Detroit deep dish style.
Buy and slice our pepperoni from the stick, we had bought per-sliced and cut it in fourths. Side note, circular pepperoni looks classy and presentable, while triangular looks more like microwave cheap pizza.
Try Chicago style! It's the logical next step.
Start working out more, because we can't eat this too often otherwise...
Rating:
8/10 Henry's
7/10 Cast Iron