Adventures in homemade pizza

Last winter (2009-2010) I came across a particularly...opinionated pizza recipe by Jeff Varasano. His "they're wrong; I'm right; do this" style is very similar to Ken Rockwell's, and I am gradually accumulating evidence suggesting I'm an absolute sucker for that kind of writing. So I made some pizzas.

I think I'd describe them as...unique.

This was before I'd figured out how to make bread, so I was very concerned about the crumb:

I had a problem with the dough getting soggy from the sauce/toppings and not baking properly.

But if baked for longer, the dough dries out and develops a very thick crust (in the "bread crust" rather than "pizza crust" usage):

And then I guess I lost interest, because that last picture is from January of 2010.

Last week, the farmer's market had some awesome tomatoes and so I decided to try again.

I used my bread recipe for the crust, and I think it turned out better this time. I'm still using a preheated baking pan instead of a pizza stone, but I have an electric oven now, which I think is better suited for pizza. The heat is drier (natural gas makes 40g H₂O per MJ), and I think the stronger radiative transfer results in selective heating of the black enameled baking pan. I baked at 500 for 5 min and then turned on the broiler for a few minutes to brown the top of the crust.

For one pizza, I tried using a 1/8" thick sheet of aluminum 6061 instead of the baking pan, but I don't think that worked out as well. I also got a pretty weird smell from whatever cutting fluid residues were left on the metal. I wonder if it's still T6 anymore...

Anyways, to address the sogginess, I seeded the tomato before crushing it and used it very sparingly. It still got soggy, but it feels more like the dough got wet after cooking rather then being too wet at the beginning and refusing to cook properly.

The big revelation, however, was in the mozzarella. This time I used "Precious" brand fresh mozzarella from Mollie Stone's, and it tastes far better than any other mozzarella I've bought before (both fresh and low-moisture). Pretty awesome. Does release a lot of moisture, though - in the second picture, I put the cheese on 5 minutes into baking thinking it'd keep the moisture locked in the cheese, but this just succeeded in creating a layer of water over the pizza that didn't get a chance to evaporate before I pulled it out.

In conclusion: maybe I got better at making the crust, or maybe it's just the electric oven. Pizza is still soggy in some places, but the cheese and sauce taste awesome so it's okay.