First Post

[lakebilly]

First of all I would like to thank this forum for all of the great information.  I've been making pizza at home for about two years with mixed success.  Until recently all of my pizza has been built on Rich's dough balls purchased at GFS.  That got me startred, but I've grown very bored with the same mediocre American style pizza.

I discovered this forum a couple of months ago and have been purchasing some of the basic tools needed.  So far I have acquired a KA stand mixer, food scale, stone & super peel, a deep dish pan and recently a case of 6-1 tomatoes.  All with the help from this board.

My latest purchase was a 16" cutterpan from Pizza Tools which has not arrived and brings me tp my first question for you experts.

I plan to make a DKM PizzaInn thin style Saturday.  Since my good cutter pan will not be here I wanted to know if a cheap shiny aluminum pan from Wally World will give me reasonably good results?  Is there a quick and easy way to season this pan to get better results?  The dough is already on the counter so I'm going to make the pizza regardless, but being a newb at this I wanted to know if the pan itself can ruin the pizza?

One more thank you to DKM for the deep dish recipe.  I've been to Lou Malnati's several times and really like that style of pizza.  I followed your deep dish recipe and was extremely happy with the results.  Next time I'll scale it down to better fit my pan, but for a first try it was great.

Thanks again.

[Pete-zza]

lakebilly,

My recollection when I last examined the bakeware at Walmart's is that they sell pizza pans that are darker than the shiny aluminum pan you mentioned which, unfortunately, cannot be seasoned that much on short notice. It will also not do a great job because it will reflect heat rather than absorb it and you are likely to end up with a whitish bottom crust. If you can find a pan at Walmart that has one of the newer, darker coatings that can tolerate fairly high oven temperatures, that would be my personal choice over the cheaper nonstick coated pans that are often oven safe to only about 450 degrees F. If the shiny aluminum pan (or some other inexpensive pan) is the only option, you could use it in combination with your pizza stone. For example, you can place the pizza stone on the lowermost oven rack position and preheat it at the desired temperature for the specified time, dress the pizza on the pan and place it at an upper oven rack position and, once the crust sets up and develops color, slip the pizza off of the pan onto the preheated stone to finish baking.

Peter

[lakebilly]

Pete

Thank you for the information.  I picked up a darker pan at a different store.  I'm hoping it will do the trick tomorrow.  I'll let you know.

Thanks again.