Bumping this pizza crust discussion to share this video. This guy uses parchment paper and this looks like a good solution to the "fresh dough sticking" thing.
Alright. We need to social distance for a while. I'm planning on making pizza tomorrow and want a change from my usual crust and sauce. I'm gonna do pepperoni & onion rather than "every veggie known to Man" and am switching from just mozzarella to including fresh shredded provolone and sharp cheddar. I've just put together my shopping list. #1: I was gonna ping you to see if you had a sauce recipe that you liked. #2: I was reading through the dough recipes I've saved and grabbed the one with that exact same technique!!! This was all within the past hour. Queue the Twilight Zone music.
I don't use a lot of sauce on a pizza, so just about any red sauce will do. I have used leftover spaghetti sauce or just cooked down tomatoes with Italian seasonings, etc. I keep a jar of commercial sauce in the pantry for pizza emergencies; it tastes fine to me.
You know, as I watched that video it occurred to me that he could have just set that entire baking pan on the stone, then after the few minutes pre-baking, lifted the pizza from the baking pan to the stone (on the paper).
There was an independent pizza place in the town I spent so many years in. My younger brother went to high school with the then-owner's daughter. I bet it had been there since the 50s...maybe even longer. And the last owner converted it to a Jerry's Sub sometime in the 90s. The pizza was sooooo good, but it predated the days of the internet so there's not gonna be any "reverse engineered" recipes out there. I'm actually chasing down that memory. I was reading about different cheeses to use on pizzas (because I think that's the big variable) and saw that most pizzarias use a combo of mozzarella and provolone, while some add sharp cheddar. I have a cooked sauce recipe around here somewhere, but I've not put it in a Word document. I have not made it in years, because most "authentic" sauces I read about are no-cook, and that's obviously so much easier. I'm even abandoning my "rises for 3 days in the fridge" crust to one that's no-rise. I've used many times for calzones and it's pretty good. And all this because the past few days someone's been running pizza delivery commercials and the plain pepperoni is stuck in my head. It looks so good, and it got me to thinking about the legacy hole-in-the-wall, and the rest is history.
That's exactly what I do. I've seen some pizzarias do it that way...life the edge of the crust from the pan to see if it's set, then slide the pizza off of the pan directly onto the stove bottom to finish. The other benefit I read to using the parchment paper is the dough will slightly stick to the paper as you roll it out, so it won't spring back to shape. I have that problem because my dough's not all that relaxed and I have no tossing-in-the-air skills. I figured I'd give it a go. As an aside, when I make Italian bread, I let it rise in a French Bread trough pan lined with parchment paper so the loaves will hold their shape, then I transfer them to the stone leaving them on the paper (it's a very loose dough.) The recipe calls for them to be rotated 90° partway through the cooking time, and sitting on the paper makes it easy.
So I rummaged and found my circa 1979 faded Washington Post newspaper recipe for deep dish pizza with a cooked pizza sauce. It was published during National Pizza Week. I don't know where that bill is I just received 3 days ago, but I found this 40 year old newspaper clipping. *sigh* So I'll make that sauce for my pizza tomorrow and see if I like it better than the "authentic" no-cook.