Skillet-Broiler Pizza Method - Results

Sorry, no pictures for this one... I took some Friday but don't think they really turned out. We made two pizzas on both Friday and Monday, following Kenji's method posted over at Serious Eats. We were using Peter Reinhart's dough, not Kenji's, but I think their hydration level is relatively similar.

I thought the method worked pretty well, except for two things:

• Almost no oven spring.
• Cleaning the pan after.

For the first, I wonder whether this is partially a product of using frozen dough. I've noticed the balls we just cold ferment in the fridge seem to do a lot better with this... and if Kenji's method is generally bad on this front, maybe the combo causes you to end up with something closer to a flatbread. As far as the pan, the solution is to use a cast iron skillet... which we have, but that needs to be scoured and re-seasoned for vegetarian uses. Maybe this will provide the motivation for that project.

On the positive side, it is very quick and turns out a nicely browned pizza without making my kitchen 100 degrees. So that's pretty awesome. The thing to try next might be 00 flour (these were bread flour + olive oil) and no freezing of the dough. However, if that does prove to be the issue, I'm not sure how practical that makes this method... freezing the dough is what makes pizza making an attractive weeknight dinner option. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a tasty flatbread either...  and maybe there are some other tricks out there I can track down.