Pizza

second attempt at frying pan pizza this eve, using pre-made frozen dough as just wanted to keep it simple. am staying at my mums this week so of course I had brought all the ingredients and then forgot my cast iron pan at home, one reluctant purchase from amazon late last night and a cheap replacement turned up just before dinner time.

dough was pretty easy to work with and got a decent size and shape out of it for first one, checked it wasn't too charred underneath and slung it under the max grill, still not sure if fan mode is better in this endeavour but i assumed it was. I messed up a little by grilling with door open for first couple of minutes before i could tell i needed a lot more heat. about 7 minutes under the grill though and it came out with a nice amount of browning to the mozarella and a fairly light coloured but cooked crust.

great success!

or was it, on trying to remove it from the pan the fucking cunting thing had welded the middle 1/3rd of the whole pizza to the fucking brand new pan. it took me 4 minutes to get the thing out and served to my gf who likes to eat early and was looking like she might do something drastic if not immediately fed.

then I spent FORTY FUCKING MINUTES scrubbing the bastard pan with salt and then deglazing it repeatedly to remove enough of the black char that had remained before I was able to make my own pizza.

second one went better, like the first i checked it was definitely not stuck after the hob stage and this time I banged it in with the door closed and after about 4 minutes it was looking pretty good. except a quick check with a spatula and i'd luckily just caught it as it was starting to burn itself onto the pan. so I pulled it out, chucked in on a baking tray and put it in just to brown the crust a bit more. end result was fucking tasty but the middle was soggy central.

things I think probably didn't help...
the dough balls that claim they're 12" pizzas are probably undersized and I went too thin.
the mozarella was the dryer type but i love a decent amount of cheese and possibly added too much liquid from it.
the pizza sauce was a can of marzano toms, italian herbs, pinch of sugar, some tomato paste whizzed in the blender, probably should have reduced it a little to remove water, wasnt runny and spread well enough i could use sparingly but still swamped the place up
the moment the dough sogged up the cast iron pan thought "I'm having that" and decided to sizzle itself to death.

no pics as was too disappointed to feel like documenting it. I think the concept is sound still but next time, thicker base, less liquid and transfer to a baking tray for grill stage to see how that turns out.