Three Onion & Three Cheese Pizza And My Favorite Easy Pizza Dough Recipe

You Too Can Make This Pizza At Home

I recently received an e-mail from a friend saying she had just made eight pizzas for her husband's birthday. "I'm so glad you told me to start with pizza dough," she said. So am I. Whenever someone tells me they want to try baking bread but have no idea how to begin, I suggest they make pizza dough first. This is the equivalent of learning to bake biscuits or scones before attempting Danish pastry and eclairs.

The thought of baking your own bread can be a little frightening. It's time consuming, and numerous things can go wrong. Then if the end result is disappointing, there's never enough time to turn around and bake another loaf. Pizza dough, on the other hand, is not temperamental or fussy. The actual hands-on work takes less than ten minutes. You can let it rise for as little or as long as you like. It is extremely difficult to ruin and will never let you down. Pizza dough disasters are rare. (If you are ready to try baking your own bread, I invite you to click here and read my Ten Tips For Better Bread.)

The trick to making incredible pizza in your regular old oven at home is to use a pizza, or baking, stone. There is simply no comparison to what happens to the crust when it is cooked directly on that very hot surface. There are many shapes and sizes and thicknesses of baking stones available. Mine is 14"x15" and about 3/4" thick, and I've been using it for a dozen years. It is now dark and seasoned. After each use just brush it off. If you must wash it (after a spilled blackened cheese episode perhaps), use only water, never soap and a scrub brush.

Handmade pizzas are gorgeous. You don't have to be a dough-tossing expert to make a beautiful pizza--the more oddly-shaped and rustic the better is my opinion. I also love a thick layer of fresh tomato sauce that is chock full of garlic and herbs. Each summer I blanch, peel, and seed pounds and pounds of San Marzano and Yellow Plum tomatoes from my garden and then pack them into one- and two-pint plastic freezer containers. It is wonderful to be able to savor the taste of summer in the middle of a snowstorm. Besides great sauce, I believe the secret to an incredible pizza is to use more of everything than you think you should: more sauce, more cheese, more toppings.

But sometimes a person desires a lighter pizza, especially when the weather is warm and appetites are smaller. I dreamed up this easy caramelized onion and garlic version one night when I was craving pizza crust and trying to figure out something interesting to serve with grilled steaks. I just sprinkled it with a little parmesan cheese, and it was a huge hit. The next time I made my usual "heavy" pizza I cooked up an onion and garlic one as well, this time adding mozzarella. It was an even bigger hit. This was several years ago, and now when I make homemade pizza for certain people, both kinds are expected.

You can serve this pizza as a side dish in winter with steaks or lamb chops, or have large slices and a garden salad for a lovely summer dinner (yes, it is worth heating up the kitchen to make it). You can cut it into small slivers and offer them as appetizers, or even form tiny individual pizzas and present them as a delightful first course. This pizza is versatile.

The absolute tastiest version I have ever made was the one I created a few nights ago using the first yellow, white, and red onions from the garden. (To read Onions In The Garden, click here.) This was the perfect way to celebrate the harvest, as the onions were the star of the show. I have seen similar versions made with wild mushrooms or fresh herbs or whatever, but these are not for me. I use mozzarella and either parmesan or romano, but the other night I pulled out the asiago by accident and tossed some of it on as well. It is hard to put too much cheese on a pizza.

Top quality ingredients are of the utmost importance when making such a simple recipe. Use extra-virgin olive oil and the nicest cheeses you can find. Organic flours are inexpensive, readily available, and better for you and the environment. I believe they create a superior tasting (and looking) final product. I use Heartland Mill brand, which I order in 50-pound bags from my local natural foods store. And of course you want the freshest onions and garlic. But I will let you in on another secret: even if all you have laying around are two ratty looking onions and some garlic that has sprouted, your pizza will still be delicious.

You can find a recipe for basic pizza dough in almost any cookbook, or you can try mine. I've found that adding some sourdough starter to my pizza dough really improves the flavor and texture. This is also a great way to use up starter if you need to refresh your container of it but don't want to bake bread. See my sourdough starter pizza dough recipe at the end of the article.

Susan's Straightforward Pizza Dough
Makes approximately two 12-inch pizzas or four 8-inch pizzas

This is a simple recipe that produces a crisp, chewy, and flavorful crust. It takes less than three hours from first step to first bite — which means you can decide at four o'clock on Saturday that you want pizza for dinner and be eating well before seven.

A digital kitchen scale makes measuring ingredients a snap. They're also great for portioning out dough for pizza, breads, and rolls. I honestly don't know how I survived in the kitchen before I bought my beloved Salter scale. However, few kitchen scales are accurate enough when weighing a fraction of an ounce, so you're better off measuring things like yeast and salt in teaspoons, milliliters, or grams.

Bread flour 3 c / 700 ml / 15 oz / 424 g (plus a little more added while kneading)
Instant yeast 1 tsp / 5 ml / 3 g
Salt 2 tsp / 10 ml / 10 g
Lukewarm water (about 90F, 32C) 1-1/3 c / 315 ml / 11-1/2 oz / 325 g

Place the bread flour in a large bowl. Stir in the yeast and salt. Add the water and stir until a soft, but not sticky, dough forms.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it for 3 minutes, sprinkling with a little flour each time it sticks to your hands or the counter. The dough should be quite soft. Just knead it by hand; it's easier and faster than getting out your big electric mixer.

Liberally sprinkle the mixing bowl with flour, place the dough back in it, and sprinkle the top of the dough with flour. Cover with a damp tea towel or cloth napkin and set in a warm place for two hours.

After about an hour, place a baking stone on the lowest rack in the oven, and set the temperature at 500 degrees. (You never want to put a cold baking stone into a hot oven as it may crack.)

For the onions:
You can cook the onion topping while the pizza dough is rising, or you can make it whenever you have time and keep it in the fridge. Thinly slice more onions than you think you need. If you're a nibbler, start with even more onions because the finished topping is addicting. Those garden onions were so good the other night that I managed to devour nearly half of the topping while it was cooling. (Note: even a plain, three-cheese pizza is scrumptious.)

Slowly cook the onions in a large skillet with plenty of olive oil until they are nice and caramelized, at least 35 minutes, or longer if you prefer them dark and crispy. Stir often. I cover mine for the first 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel and chop as many cloves of garlic as you like, sprinkling them with salt. When the onions are done, clear a space in the middle of the skillet, add the garlic, and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly. Do not allow the garlic to brown. Mix the garlic into the onions and transfer to a plate to cool if you have time.

Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide it into two or four pieces. I use a pastry scraper, sometimes called a dough scraper or bench scraper, which is a handly little gizmo that is also great for cleaning off my butcher block countertop. Flatten each piece of dough into a disk and let them rest for 10 to 15 minutes.

There are many ways to shape pizza dough; experiment to find what works for you. Smaller pizzas are easier to shape than larger ones. I simply hold the disk of dough in front of me by one edge and use gravity and my fingers to gently stretch it into a larger circle. I then lower it onto a wooden pizza peel that has been dusted with plenty of cornmeal, and finish stretching it into the shape and thickness I want, pinching together any tears. You can also set it on a rimless baking sheet (or directly onto your pizza pan if you aren't using a baking stone).

Another option is to form and bake your pizzas on a sheet of parchment paper (I prefer unbleached). I'd never thought to do this, but it makes sense, especially with heavily topped pizzas — and in warmer weather when the dough wants to stick to the peel.

Don't worry if your pizzas aren't perfect circles. If you like a thick edge on your pizza, go around the outside of the circle and fold the dough over, pressing it down and sealing it with your fingers.

Working quickly, scatter the onion and garlic mixture evenly over the crust and then sprinkle the cheese on top. I use about 8 ounces of mozzarella per pizza, plus a few handfuls of coarsely grated parmesan or romano and asiago. Fresh mozzarella balls or logs should be sliced rather than grated.

Gently shake the peel to make sure the pizza is not stuck to it, and then carefully slide the pizza onto the hot baking stone. This is done in one quick move, and it can take some practice, but all mistakes are edible. If have trouble, consider the parchment paper trick. My baking stone is about 14 inches by 15 inches and will hold one 12-inch pizza or two 8-inch pizzas.

Bake until the crust is golden and the cheese has started to brown, about 10-14 minutes. If I know I'll be freezing and reheating a pizza later, I undercook it by a couple of minutes. Assemble the next pizza when the first one is nearly done; the uncooked pizzas do not rise at all but go straight into the oven.

Use your pizza peel to remove the pizza from the oven or just slide it right onto a pizza pan. I use an aluminum blade peel for removing pizzas and breads from the oven. The long handle is really nice. Cut into slices, serve, and wait for everyone to sing your praises.

Click here to read about the only thing that tastes even better than a pizza you made yourself.

Susan's Sourdough Starter Pizza Dough Recipe
Makes approximately two 12-inch pizzas or four 8-inch pizzas

Sourdough starters are easy to make. The initial process takes a few days, but the actual hands-on work is minimal. Recipes for sourdough starters abound in cookbooks and online. I made my 5-year-old levain starter using the recipe in Bread Alone by Daniel Leader, one of my favorite bread books. The easiest thing to do, though, is to get some from somebody else. Ask around; you might be surprised by who has one living in their fridge.

You can make my Straightforward Pizza Dough recipe, reducing the amount of water to 1 cup 240 ml 8 oz 224 g, and simply toss 1 cup 240 ml 8 oz 224 g of sourdough starter straight from the fridge into the mix. But if you have the time, it's best if you add a little flour and water to your cup of starter and let it sit awhile:

Sourdough starter 1 cup/ 240 ml / 8 oz / 224 g
Water 1/4 cup / 60 ml / 2 oz / 56 g
Bread flour 1/4 cup / 60 ml / 1-1/4 oz / 32 g

Combine starter, water, and bread flour in a small bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 10 hours (or less if that's all the time you have). Proceed with my Straightforward Pizza Dough recipe, but reduce the amount of water to 1 cup 240 ml 8 oz 224 g.

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