Jim,
I have always viewed pizza as being an intensely personal matter based on personal taste preferences. Consequently, I have never viewed my opinions as being any better or more valuable than anyone else's. It all comes down to what you like. I happen to like most types and styles of pizzas and look forward to the next pizza I make and what it will give me in the way of a pleasurable eating experience and, hopefully, more knowledge about pizza. However, to answer your question, the best pizzas I have ever made in my standard home oven were made from doughs that used natural starters, preferments, or very long periods (15+ days) of cold fermentation. These protocols are the ones that I believe provide the best crust flavors, textures and aromas. They are also artisanal in nature and not the sort of thing you are going to find in most pizzerias.
The above situations aside, I would say that I am generally perfectly content with some variation of the Lehmann NY style dough. I have used the Lehmann dough formulation as the base of so many experiments that I have a high comfort level with that recipe. It also has a classical appeal to it, because it is simple and straightforward with strong connections to the ways that the old NYC pizza masters used to make their pizzas. Next on the list, I would perhaps put the Di Fara-like clones that are based on using a combination of the Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour and a high-gluten flour such as the King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour. Examples can be seen in the series of posts starting at Reply 130 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,504.msg28423.html#msg28423.
Another pizza that pleasantly surprised me was the Papa Gino's clone pizzas. I described two different dough formulations for those clones at Reply 79 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8167.msg71404.html#msg71404 and at Reply 94 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8167.msg71789.html#msg71789. I liked just about everything about those pizzas, but what I really liked was the fact that the leftover slices reheated beautifully. That is important to me since I rarely eat more than a couple of slices of a freshly baked pizza. The reheated slices were as good as the original.
I also don't want to leave out cracker style pizzas. It took me a while to become comfortable with that style, but with the help of members like Jackitup (Jon) and (John) fazzari, I reached the point where I felt I understood the dynamics of that style. The thread that shows my evolution with that style is
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.0.html. Things turned around for me with that style starting at Reply 16 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.msg49138.html#msg49138. I had great fun with the cracker-style and learned a lot from the collaborative effort that went into the abovereferenced thread.
I have also made memorable clones of the Donatos, Round Table, Papa John's, Monical's and Greek/pub style pizzas. I can give you links to those pizzas if that is of any interest to you.
Apparently while you were away recently, you missed that widespreadpizza (Marc) and I both made long, room-temperature fermentations using no commercial yeast whatsoever. So, that takes away the challenge of measuring out 1/256 teaspoon of IDY. Marc's pizza is described and shown starting at Reply 82 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78756.html#msg78756. Mine is described and shown at Reply 84 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78779.html#msg78779. What started our efforts was Marc's post at Reply 62 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7225.msg78700.html#msg78700.
As you can see, there is no reason to limit your repertoire to three doughs. Most of our new members leave the forum after they learn how to make one dough reasonably well. I think they miss a lot of good eating as a result.
Peter
