Baked Ziti Pizza

[dcusick]

What's up all?  I have been searching the web for a recipe for this, and can't find anything!  I am looking to try to make a Baked Ziti pizza.  Love it, and would love to be able to make it.

I can definitely guess on a recipe.  Cook ziti.  Combine ziti, sauce, and ricotta.  Put over pie.  Cover with Mozzarella.

Seems to make sense, but any ideas if there's more to it?  What dough would be good for this?  I have made Tom Lehmann's NY Style before, using Pete-zza's trials.  But is there a specific thickness I should be looking for to support the ziti?  Should I "blind" bake the crust or anything first?

Thanks in advance for the help!!!

[Pete-zza]

dcusick,

Welcome to the forum.

I have seen ziti pizzas in some of the NYC street slice shops. My recollection is that the ziti pizza also had cheddar cheese. But your proposed "recipe" looks workable.

Since what I saw in NYC was the NY style, there should be no reason why you can't use any standard NY style dough, including the Lehmann dough. I would use the standard thickness (e.g., a thickness factor of 0.10-0.105) and I would just put the ziti on and bake the pizza, just as they do in the slice shops. I suspect that most places that sell ziti pizzas use the same baked ziti that they sell separately and just put the baked ziti on the pizza along with the mozzarella cheese and bake the whole thing.

If you need a particular Lehmann dough recipe for any size pizza or thickness that isn't already available on the Lehmann thread, let me know. I'd love to hear the results of your ziti pizza.

Peter

[dcusick]

Okay, went with your suggestion Pete-zza...  Made the Lehmann NY Style, .105 thickness, 14 inch pizza.  Here is the "recipe" I used for the pie...

Cooked up 14 oz of sauce, added my seasonings.
Cooked up a half pound of ziti.
Combined the ziti, with about 3/4 of the sauce, 7.5 oz of Ricotta, and about 3 oz. of shredded mozzarella.
Mixed it up while the ziti/sauce was hot, so it would melt the cheese.

I formed my pie, and topped it with as much of the ziti mixture as I could.  Didn't want to go crazy!  Then topped that with the rest of the sauce, and about 3-4 oz more of mozarella.  Then I grated some fresh parmesan on top of that.  Cooked at 550 for about 10 minutes. 

Here is the result!  Thanks for the advice!!!

[Bill/SFNM]

I remember a baked ziti pie I had many years ago. IIRC, Italian sausage was in there somewhere.

Bill/SFNM

[Pete-zza]

dcusick,

Your pizza looks a lot like one of the ziti pizzas that I saw in NYC except that the pizza there was 18 inches.

Did the pizza taste as good as it looks?

BTW, a variation that I have seen on menus is to add some chicken.

Peter

[dcusick]

Bill:

I actually was going to use my ziti recipe that had italian sausage in it, but the wife is a vegetarian, and she was hungry.  So I couldn't!  Might just make two next time.  One for me, one for her!!!

Pete:
Actually it did!  Everything mixed up very well, and the cheeses melted perfectly on the pie.  Thank you for this site, has helped my pizza making already, and I've only been lurking around here for a month.