Make Pizza in Your Oven

In addition to sharing a name, Eric of Garden Fork and I seem to exist in some sort of synchronicity vortex. This past Saturday, after I finished teaching a bread class in which I used the same dough to demonstrate how you can make pizza in your oven with a cast iron skillet, I settled down on the couch to catch up with Eric’s YouTube channel. And guess what he was demonstrating?

I first learned about this technique from Josey Baker. Basically, you start the pizza out on the stove top and finish it under your oven’s broiler. I’ve found that it works almost as well as having an outdoor pizza oven and it’s a whole lot easier.

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8 Comments

  1. Do you no longer use the pizza dough recipe that you taught at LA Bread Bakers? I took your class a few years ago in Westchester.

    • Hey Nick, funny thing is that I have no memory of teaching this class! Senior moment! I’m guessing it was a sourdough with 00 flour? If so I’d stand behind that. Right now, however, I’ve been too busy working on the house to maintain a sourdough starter so I’ve been using Josey Baker’s yeasted bread recipe. It’s not as good as sourdough but takes less effort. I still prefer a sourdough pizza made with 00.

  2. I love it! Simple yet extremely effective! I don’t own any cast iron, but have always wanted one and this might just be the excuse I needed to get some!

  3. I tried this technique the last time that you (or Eric of Garden Fork) featured it. The first time, I burned the bottom of the pizza. I learned to turn the heat down somewhat when the cast iron pan is on the stove. From then on, the recipe worked fine.

  4. I’ve been doing it this way since you first shared it! It’s dead simple and better than 90% of what I can go out and buy around here.

  5. It is rather reassuring watching other people space the same sort of things I do in the kitchen–preheating, setting the timer. Ha! Oh well. Can’t argue with a delicious end result.

    Matt and I make pizza from scratch every Friday. It is our Thing and a swell way to kick off our weekend. Plus, you know, have pizza for breaky on Saturday.

    We’ve made deep-dish style in the cast iron before, but never with the stove-top step.

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