I don't know if I've shown you this before. I make a scratch pizza every Friday night and was going through the usual process last Friday and thought to share my technique with you.
I admit it, I do have a lot of kitchen ware. However, I tend to not want to buy single-purpose kitchen gadgets. So, I've never bought a pizza stone or special pizza pan. Instead, I bake our scratch pizzas on my regular (but large) baking sheets. The problem with baking pizza dough on a regular baking sheet is the crust doesn't crisp up very well without over-baking the top of the pizza.
I stumbled upon this little technique that requires no extra equipment and little skill. I first bake the pizza on a greased baking sheet for all but the final 2 minutes. The crust edge is beginning to brown and the top of the cheese looks a little toasty. At this point, the dough has baked.
I remove the pizza and sheet from the oven, then using a metal spatula, I loosen the entire pizza from the baking sheet, but leaving it still on the sheet.
To remove the pizza from the oven, I use the spatula to slide it back onto the baking sheet. Once the pizza is out, I slide a cake cooling rack between the sheet and the pizza so sweat doesn't form on the crust's bottom.
You can kind of see how toasty the underside of this pizza looks. Perfectly crisp pizza crust -- just how we like it, here.
It works. It's free. And I didn't need to buy or store anything extra.
