Daniel has declared that Wednesday night should hereafter be pizza night. In addition he’s promised to eat vegetables if there is pizza made. I like a very thin crust but he wants pan pizza. We usually make a couple different ones anyway so this week I endeavored to create a pan pizza for him. We had a pan pizza which was mushroom and chicken sausage and then a flat pizza with zucchini and shrimp topping. I had a rather feisty dough so the thin pizza didn’t turn out very thin but the pan pizza seemed to satisfy.

Pizza dough

2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 tablespoons active dry yeast (or about 2 packets)
2 cups warm water (at about 110 F)
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
cornmeal

Mix together the honey, yeast and water in a large bowl and let sit for about 5 minutes or until foamy. In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the olive oil and 3 cups of the flour mixture and stir well with a wooden spoon. Abandon the spoon and add more of the flour mixture until you have a dough that’s only slightly sticky. I knead my dough right in the bowl and would rather err on the slightly damp side than the too dry side. Cover tightly with cling wrap and let stand until the dough has doubled. (45 minutes in my case)

Half of this dough went into a 9 x 11 pan for the deep dish and the other half became a flat pizza. I think in future that half might become instead two flat pizzas so that I can get it thinner. The thin pizza I top and put in the oven immediately at 400 F until it browns- 20 minutes in this case and that’s longer than usual. If I get it nice and thin it’s more like 10 minutes. The deep dish pizza continued to rise while the first cooked and then it went into the oven for 25 minutes.