The thick and thin of this pizza.

I posted a pizza in the WFD thread. This is the making of that 19" pizza.

Shoprite supermarket near by me makes fresh mozzarella in the store. Warm fresh-made mozzarella, as you all know, is not the same as the typical shelf refrigerated ones. It�s soft, milky and stringy. I got one lb ($9.00) to make this pie.

With this fresh M. cheese, I wanted to tryout a recipe that I had seen; a black garlic pizza. Both black garlic and fresh mozzarella cheese are delicate in flavor and unique in texture, I didn�t want to have a thick crush to take away the stringiness of the cheese and the melt-in-your-mouth consistency of the black garlic. So I decided to make the crust thin. On the other hand, I agree that there is something nice about a pizza crust that�s thick.

Solution? A pizza that�s both thick and thin.

The crust was thin in the center of the pie where the cheese was laid out and thick as it got close to the rim.

The onion was baked in the center because not everyone liked onion, this way everyone could take as much onion as one wanted. The pizza was baked with a few quarry tiles under the center of the pan to prevent the thin part from being over baked.

A generous amount of black garlic was used. Because the dramatic contrast of the pure white mozzarella and the jet black garlic, some of the black garlic was under the cheese and in the savory sauce.

A method I have found to be easy and quick to make the pizza dough. You may want to give it a try. Yes, I can twirl the dough up in the air, but other than showing off, that�s kind of messy and with no time saving and other benefits. I got a large sheet of silicone baking mat (cheaper than Silpat), placed the dough under the mat. Using an artist�s print roller I was able to quickly and easily roll the dough to any shape and thickness I wanted. Because the silicone mat was non-stick, I didn�t have to keep on powdering the dough. This method also gave me a nice thick uniform rim around the perimeter to pool the sauce. Once I had the shape and the thickness, I left the mat on top to cover the dough for it to rise some more.

Using the bread machine to prepare the dough and the above method to make the pie, a 19" pizza making was really quick and completely painless.

Americans eat approximately 100 ACRES OF PIZZA EACH DAY! (That�s right, each day!) How do you make yours? Any tips, opinions and techniques to share?

dcarch