My Starting Point - Thin Crust

[Tatoosh]

One of the favorite pizzas I've had was from Caro Amico in Portland Oregon.  They reputedly brought pizza to Portland shortly after WWII.  They did a rectangular thin crust with a wonderful Italian sausage topping.  My favorite pizza after I moved out of the Caro Amico area was Hot Lips Pizza, which is more of New York style or American.  Thicker rim, soft center, not thick, and made with the best quality ingredients available.  

I have had a number of other types, but Caro Amico was the one I tried to recreate when we started making pizzas in my home kitchen after I moved to the Philippines.  Given some limitations in ingredients and my kitchen oven, we are far from their quality.  Which has me trying different approaches and types of pizza to find ones I can make here and improve the quality of the end product.  

Attached is a photo of an early pizza.  We usually get the crust a touch browner, but this one was starting to darken the topping so it got pulled.  Bottoms are generally crisp, and since I pre-bake or blind bake the crust, there is little sogginess from the toppings.  But it is fairly representative of what we turn out.  

Flour is Pillsbury or Gold Medal, which are the top end AP flours where I live, some 6 hours away from Manila.  Sauce is homemade. Cheese is the biggest challenge.  Filipino stores generally sell based on price point, quality is a distant second or third consideration.  So finding better quality mozzarella is a challenge.

I will keep making this, but will move to a New York style when my Pizza Kettle for the Weber arrives later this month.  Also will be doing Chicago Style Deep Dish, and I hope to do a cracker style (similar to the old Pizza Hut of the 60's and 70's).  

Note: Upon reflection, I should have added this to the newbie section.  My apology. 

[CDNpielover]

looking good, would you mind posting your dough formulation?

Aside from the square shape (see below), that looks nearly identical to a Chicago-style (or, more appropriately "Midtwestern-style) thin crust.  If you're looking to improve your dough (?), you might want to check out the formulations that are listed in this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,16422.0.html

[Tatoosh]

I do admit I'm still learning the correct terminology or categories of pizza.  I'm still sorting out New York from Neapolitan, Chicago thin crust from American, and so forth.  Even Deep Dish and Pan Pizza can trip me up.  I spend time in the various threads and the glossary, so there is hope I'll figure it out in time.

The pizza in the photo was made with a "Basic Plain Pizza Dough" recipe - but not sure where I got it.

• 1 Tbsp ADY
  1 cup water (110F)
  1 1/2 tsp sugar
  2 1/4 - 2 1/2 cups AP flour
  2 Tbsp olive oil
  1 tsp salt

Made with a poolish consisting of 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 tsp yeast, made 8 - 12 hours ahead.

Fabrication Note:  I partially bake my pizza crust in a 450F - 475F oven for 5 minutes.  Then egg wash it when pulled, letting the residual heat set the wash.  Overkill according to some, but I get zero sogginess even if the pizza is heavily sauced and topped, which is likely if my wife gets involved.  The pizza is finished at the same temperature for 7 to 8 minutes.  But we often make enough that we can freeze the partially baked crusts for future use.  It doesn't seem to affect their flavor significantly.

Lately, we have been using a King Arthur recipe called Beer Pizza Dough which is fairly tasty, provides pretty good structure, even for our thinly rolled pizza (not as thin as a cracker style, though) and pretty good flavor.  We haven't tried freezing either the dough or partially baked crusts yet with the KA Beer dough recipe.   This dough does not have a poolish, but I'd like to figure out if I could do that. I don't know if I could use beer for the poolish or simply replace the amount of liquid used in the poolish with water and deduct that amount from the beer quantity of the overall recipe.  Something to try in the future.