Ever since I first heard about Grandma pizza I’ve been wondering what it would take to make one at home. Tonight, I gave it my best shot and I was very pleased. The pie is baked in a rectangular tray, similar to my tray pizza. The similarity stops there.

For my first attempt, I used my traditional dough recipe and allowed it to raise in a bowl for several hours. Once it had achieved double volume, I stretched it into the well-oiled tray and allowed it to rise again. Once it filled the tray, I placed it in the refrigerator over night.

The next day, I spread olive oil on the top of the dough, then layered slices of fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese. Next was hand crushed San Marzano tomatoes sprinkled with oregano, salt and pepper. Finally, I spread chopped fresh basil and a whole clove of roasted garlic and rappini.

The pizza went into the oven as soon as it was heated to 480 degrees. At that high temperature, however, the oil was smoking pretty badly. I was afraid that the smoke would spoil the flavor, so I turned the temp down until the crust looked light brown. The bottom looked to be starting to burn, so I turned on the broiler to finish the toppings and brown the cheese.

The result was an amazing mix of flavor. My favorite part was the way that each bite was slightly different because of the way the toppings were placed on the pie. The classic ingredients went perfectly together and the crust had a wonderful light, crisp feel.

I need to find a way to get the cost of this pizza down as the fresh ingredients added up quickly. I may also reduce the amount of oil slightly as it seemed a bit greasy. I am hooked on the taste of this pie and I will be baking another one very soon. It even reheated very well the next day.

Tonight I made two pizzas from my recent test batch of Biga dough (dough made with a pre-fermented starter mix). The first was a Napolena, or as close as I could get, with hand crushed San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh buffalo mozzarella, drizzled olive oil, and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

For the oven prep, I used two pizza stones (one under and one over) with the oven set at 550 degrees. I wanted to have as much heat as possible in order to get a fast bake. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the pizza to bake any faster than normal. It baked in just under 8 minutes. I also ditched the pizza screen in order to get the best heat reaction on the pizza base. As you can tell by the photos, not using a screen allowed the dough ball (20 oz.) to shrink more than normal while on the peel. This caused the crust to be thicker than I wanted it to be. I’ll fix that next time.

As for taste, I can’t say this any simpler… it was the best tasting pizza crust I’ve ever made. The texture and flavor was very near perfect in my opinion. There was a crisp outer crust with tender elastic inside crust. The flavor added by the pre-fermentation was unmistakable. It added a rich pizza bread flavor which most of my other dough batches were missing. In fact, I generally rely on the toppings and sauce to lead the taste of my pies. This dough recipe will allow me to keep toppings very simple and still have an effective overall taste experience. The Napolena in it’s beautiful simplicity really highlighted the flavor of the new dough recipe. Everyone at the table agreed.

The second pizza was an attempt to serve a typical American pizza on the new (3-day old) dough. For this I used the same sauce that I always use and store brand cheese, pepperoni and mushrooms. The pizza was very good, if not somewhat trumped by the first one. I noticed with this pie the natural sweetness of the biga dough as the overall taste of the pie was far sweeter than my normal dough (despite the fact that this dough had no sugar added). I really liked the taste of a sweet pizza as this is something I’ve been after in sauce for quite a while.

Overall, the first run of pizzas using the pre-fermented dough can be considered a smashing success for me. I learned a few things and I have some ideas for the pizzas I will be making from the rest of the batch. The main frustration was not seeing the quick bake that I was looking for in the oven. I’ve seen all sorts of zany ways to handle this, so stay tuned as I continue to tweak that part of my process. Enjoy the pics!

Wow, Anthony might be even more obsessed than me about his pizza (he tried to make pizza in his fireplace as a kid)! Anthony is the owner of Una Pizza Napoletana in New York City. In these short videos he talks about his oven, his ingredients and even gives advice to home pizza bakers. I found them inspiring and educational.

Watch Anthony talk about pizza passion

I was experimenting with Google Insights for Search this evening and I’ve discovered that Sausage is the Worlds most searched for pizza topping! Here’s a link to the statistics: Sausage vs Pepperoni vs Mushrooms on Google Insights

It’s also interesting to note that mushrooms is beating out pepperoni in the US, but not Canada or the UK. How does your favorite topping fare?

PS: Check out this surprising comparison of Chicago vs. New York Pizza

Is this a trend or is it a coincidence that this episode of “In Search of Perfection - Perfect Pizza” featuring the self proclaimed culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal covers a recipe very similar to the dough that is in my refrigerator right now? The videos show Heston traveling to Naples and bringing back some wonderful advice for making pizza at home. It’s inspired me to seek higher temperature bakes from my oven.

Thanks Slice