Which crust/sauce should I try next?

[Randy]

bread flour and high gluten addtive is just not very good.  Use high gluten flour.
Did you place the screen on the lowest rack in your oven?
Attention to detail is the path to heavenly pizza.
Keep trying you will get there. 

We Did.

Randy

[canadave]

Keep trying you will get there. 

We Did.

We did?? 

Oh, right--I mean, YES, we did!!

lol...I dunno, I'm still not sure about myself.  Still LOTS of room for improvement in my pizzas!

[BradLovesPizza]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I cooked it on the middle rack. You know, probably the thing that appealed to me the most when I started reading this forum about half a year ago is that people were saying the secret to great pizza was a really hot oven.    That all made sense to me. After all, pizza places seem to be able to crank out a pizza really fast when they want to - especially if the first one they made for you was wrong.  So, I've been wanting to crank it up there as high as my little oven can go (550).  So many things recipes require a 350 or 375 oven. Maybe it's possible that my oven is just tuned to cook best at that temperature to match the norm.

So next time:
Fewer ingredients for sure. Probably drop the sausage and stick to pepperoni and cheese.
Lower rack probably
I'll split the batch into two pizzas. One to cook at 475 - the other at 550.
I'll still use the screen
I have a stone, but don't want to add that complexity right now

Some day I'll get to the point where I'll overhear people say things like "I'm going to make sure I show up to <insert event here>. Brad is going to make his famous pizzas! He says he just got his recipe and technique from some guys on a web-site, but I don't believe it.". 

Brad

[Gils]

That pizza looked pretty good Brad all things considered. I think you are on the right track with lowering the ingredient levels. When i was working the pizza parlors, we would run with about 12 oz of cheese for a 15-16 inch pizza. another 3-4 oz for fi they wanted extra cheeze. We use to also proportionately lessen the amount of topping as more were added. 6 oz of sausage on a 16 " but only 3.5-4 with another topping added like pepperoni. And again lessened as they might add something else to approx 2.5 oz.

We were always working to build a blend of flavors, even though some people prefer one falvor to stand out over another. this is preference.. if you like more of a certain topping or toppings I think (pete i think already stated) that you can lower your temp a bit and go longer.  The heat then has time to penetrate to the middle levels of the pizza, for longer before the top & bottom do. 

As far as the fough sticking goes, a thin spot in the dough will allow the sauce to penetrate to the screen and creat a glue situation that when cook will fuse to the screen. As stated before, dust lightly with flour prior to setting on the screen. Also the amount of time the dough sits on the screen while being built will affect it. the longer the dough sits, the more it relaxes, this can allow it to ooze (if you will) between the wires of the screen, and with the extra weight of toppings will again cause the dough to cook to or around the wires of the screen.

If you are getting thin spots, one trick is to stretch the dough in phases. Pull, toss, roll or stretch until it starts to get tight, then pause for a minute or two. This will allow the glutens in the dough to relax a bit, and you can continue on till you reach the ddesired size.

The smoke is natural. Between the high temp of the oven, and anything that may be in the bottom of the oven, combined with the flour & toppings on the pizza can create smoke. 

Good job on the whole endeavor. The best part of doing this whole thing is that you can actually eat your mistakes and nobody is the wiser hehehe.

I know this reitterates a lot of what everbody else has already stated, but I hope it helps

Mike

[BradLovesPizza]

Thank you, Mike. I'll definately do the flour trick to avoid sticking. Knowing the approx ounces to use is very helpful.