Pizza Stone - Thin Crust Pizza

July 23, 2008 by dave.

Many people acquire a pizza stone in the hopes that they can mimic what is often served in brick-oven pizza restaurants.  Unfortunately people I talk to that have gone this route are often disappointed in the results.  I too was not happy with the outcome of my attempts to create a high-quality thin-crust pizza in this manner so I started browsing the web for advice.  Based on info I ran across on discussion boards and manufacturer’s sites (as well as things I discovered on my own) I came up with a process that works.  The pizza is thin, crispy, and tastes very close to what you’d get from a brick-oven pizza restaurant.

The advice: Preheat your oven for an hour on 475.  Yes - this is probably one of the most important things.  In order to have a crispy, thin crust your stone and the oven must be blazing hot.  Before I discovered this I ended up with a pizza having a crust that was undercooked because the toppings would cook faster than the bottom.  I also believe this cooks the crust faster and doesn’t let it continue to ‘rise’ while cooking….again, resulting in a thinner crust.

Have all your toppings ready and laid out and INSTEAD of assembling and sliding the raw pizza on the stone with a paddle, do the assembly right on the hot stone.  This is easier than it sounds…and easier than trying to put the uncooked pizza in the oven without messing it up.

So when you are ready to ‘build’ your pizza open the oven and slide out the heated stone on the oven rack.  If the stone is seasoned enough you  won’t need to add the obligatory corn meal….but you can if you want.  Lay out a pre-rolled and flattened section of dough.  Now - another key piece of advice: brush olive oil all over the top of the crust.  Logic told me this would make it mushy but my logic was backwards and I discovered this was the key to getting a crispy crust.  See….the oil ‘fries’ the dough and the edge crust….which is what you want.  Add the other toppings….cook…and it should be ready in7-9 minutes.  Just keep an eye on it.

Lastly….what is a good dough?  Well store-bought dough (the kind already in a dough-ball) is too elastic due to the gluten that’s used as a preservative.  The Pillsbury roll-out dough is just ‘OK’…but I’d recommend you really roll it out flat.  I found a good homemade dough that I really like out on the Internet which I adapted slightly.

So that’s it.  The keys are to have a good recipe, really heat the oven, oil the dough, and assemble the pizza directly on the stone in the oven.  For the recipe I referred to click here.

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