Sawsheezle does pizza: Part 3 - Equipment and other thoughts

On the seventh day God rested. Or was it the 6th day? If God obeyed the 40 hour work week then he would have rested on the 6th day...we're heading toward technological unemployment and I wouldn't be surprised if we went to a 4 day work week, but that is another story. Today, I want to share a few links with you about my thought processes.

I am now a pizza-stone convert, but it isn't all perfect. Here's my stone:

http://www.amazon.com/Pizzacraft-Square-Cordierite-Baking-Pizza/dp/B005IF3086/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412903075&sr=8-1&keywords=pizzacraft+pizza+stone

And it's pretty amazing. The idea is that the stone gets hot and serves as a surface to cook the bottom of the raw pizza. However, as hot as it can get (500 deg F), it doesn't have enough thermal mass to deliver enough energy to a raw pizza to really get the bottom of the pizza super crispy. Take a look at this analysis of pizza-stones vs pizza-steel (an advanced topic):

http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/09/the-pizza-lab-the-baking-steel-delivers.html

And this is why I am going to pre-bake my crust for a few minutes before I put the sauce on toppings on. This will be my 4th attempt at homemade pizza (and first time officially for the Fur) and I have never gotten the super crispy crust I want. More thoughts on pre-baking:

http://www.joy-of-pizza.com/pizza-dough/pizza-dough-should-i-prebake.htm

People also recommend dough docking, but what is that?



Dough docking is helpful when making thin crust 'za. I will dough dock using a pasta ladle...something like this

What about you greater Fur community? Do you have any questions for this ninja? Do you think I can pull off a decent pizza? Are my herb ratios too unstable? Perhaps you are just waiting to see the final product? If so, stay tuned!