Pizza Dough

This is more a catalog of missteps than a review -- but with a happy ending.

First the good news. This is one of the easiest doughs I've ever made with a beautiful (there is no other word for it) feel to the dough. I had never used the Italian 00 flour before (a friend found it for me out of state since I have not seen it locally) and it was a revelation. Incredible to work with. I wish every grocery store would carry this flour,

The recipe makes enough for 6-8 fairly small pizzas.

Making the pizza was more complicated and here I went off track because I didn't have the right equipment (a 9-10 in cast-iron or enameled cast-iron pan) in which to do the stove-top parbake Batali recommends. I just stuck the dough on my usual pizza pan and went for it. This worked fine for the first pizza, a pizza margherita -- even though my oven really wasn't hot enough. Still -- the final product gave more than a hint of what this pizza dough can be.

The second pizza I based on a salad I had at a NYC pizza place last week -- it was a roasted/raw fennel salad and it was terrific. Googled fennel and pizza and came up with 2-3 recipes I liked the sound of, and then created my own version pulling elements from each. So I ended up with a 2-1 ratio of thinly sliced fennel and yellow onions which I cooked in a little EVOO, adding salt and Italian seasonings to the mix, until carmelized. Rolled out the pizza, added parmesan and mozzarella and topped with a little too much of the fennel/onion mix. Then topped with some chopped Kalamata olives and into the oven. Which promptly lost the already inadequate heat it had ... so we quickly moved the pizza outside to the grill -- where it kind of broke in half because the toppings were too heavy for the crust. And even so -- I can't wait to make this again with changes based on what I tasted --and learned -- this time.

Next time I will parbake the dough. I will do a 1-1 ratio of fennel and onion. I will make and use use less of the topping than I did this time.

I'd also like to vary this a couple of ways:

1. try with a tomato sauce base
2. use herbes de Provence rather than Italian seasoning and try Nicoise olives in place of the Kalamatas.
3. try with lightly dressed salad greens added to the top of the cooked pizza