Pizza Recipe: Pan Fried Pizza, Perfect for Leftover Dough

A few weeks ago I made some cold-fermented pizza dough. The recipe I used resulted in more dough than I could handle which meant I had to move it fast. It was like I was the leader of a pizza cartel that was trafficking dough. Could I get rid of the dough before the next shipment came in? What if we had a rat inside the kitchen? I couldn’t risk being caught, so I got rid of the evidence by pan frying some pizza. 

Pizza is such a simple creation. As long as you have crispy dough, red sauce, and a bit of gooey cheese not much else matters. Pizzas are built on that crust which means it’s under a fair amount of scrutiny. If the crust holds up the pizza is passable. When you make fried pizza dough, it’s betting hard on that concept. The crust will be so crispy and piping hot that you’ll forget that the sauce is room temperature and the cheese dotting the surface has yet to bubble. 

Getting Started

You’ll need some dough. It can be refrigerated, but I let it sit at room temperature for an hour. Before you’re ready to toss the dough to its death, heat a pan up and coat it with a bit of olive oil. Too much results in quite the miss. Oil start slipping and sliding, panic sets in, and before you know you start a grease fire in your kitchen. Not that that’s ever happened in my kitchen.

The dough should sit in the pan for only a few minutes. It’ll puff up like a whoopee cushion almost instantly. There’s some science that explains this (the reaction of yeast and hot oil?) but I have no idea why it happens. One of the many mysteries of pizza. 

After two-three minutes you can flip your dough and reveal the crisp bottom layer. It looks like it’s been in a brick over for a few minutes when in actuality it’s been drowning face-first in some hot oil! While it’s sitting in the pan, it’s time to add your toppings. I keep it light since there’s not a lot of heat on that surface. Unless you’re okay putting raw ingredients in your stomach, I’d stick with just the sauce and cheese. 

A few sizzling minutes later and your pizza is complete. 

Some may scoff at the combination of slighty-cold ingredients on the roof of the pizza, but I disagree. I’m a fan of the juxtaposition. Makes my tastebuds feel alive. Plus, it’s refreshing to be able to eat pizza without instantly destroying the roof of my mouth thanks to difficult-to-chew cheese.

Cooking With Cold Fermented Pizza Dough

Last weekend I made some cold fermented dough. In theory it’s a great idea for the summer time, but eventually you gotta turn that oven on to cook the dough. But hey, you get to put a bunch of flour in the freezer which is a fun novelty. 

I let the dough sit out for three hours at room temperature before preparing it for the oven. It didn’t rise too much which I chalked up to being part of the experience. Neapolitan pizza is the end goal here, which means a naturally thin pizza. I can vouch for this dough’s workability. It was smooth, soft, and a pleasure to stretch. It could get a job in any pizzeria if it needed one. 

Look at this guy, hanging out on my pizza stone with a thin layer of sauce and fresh mozzarella dotting the landscape. This was all about the crust so I opted to keep the toppings scant. One mistake I made was not precooking the crust. Most of the time when I make dough I precook it because it never cooks fast enough. My oven wasn’t made specifically for pizza dough so I gotta find other ways to make it work. No preheating the dough meant burnt cheese. 

I’m not too happy about it. The cheese was bland and the dough was flimsy. It couldn’t have ended any worst. You can see the dough lived up to the promise. It didn’t rise to the heavens, but was nice and crunchy. I went back to the drawing board with the second pizza and emerged with a better pizza strategy and a cute looking pie. 

I turned the heat up to 500 degrees fahrenheit from 450 and precooked the dough. I got it to brown to the level I wanted and the cheese and sauce weren’t absolutely ruined in the the sweltering oven. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that cooking pizza in the oven is less about set times and more keeping a watchful eye on the oven. Anything can happen in that heat den!  The best laid plans of mice and pizza, am I right?

Would I use cold fermented dough again? Possibly. It’s time consuming, but if you’re looking for thin crust this is your ticket. It was one of the easiest doughs to work with and once I got the handle on how it cooked we got together perfectly. If you want to make the type of pizza you get from a pizzeria you’ll want to avoid this and go for a traditional dough recipe with warm water. Again, you can find the recipe I used at 101 cookbooks. 

Beat the Heat With Ice Cold Pizza

It’s Summer time and the only savior we have from that horrid sun shining its gloriously hot light onto our feeble bodies is the cold. Ice cold if possible. The notion of embracing the cold is counter to the pizza fundamentals. Piping hot pizzas sprout from ovens that seem to have channeled the power of Hell. The most uncomfortable environment to be in on a sweltering Summer day.

You’re sipping on your iced coffee, huddled by the air conditioner wonder where pizza has a place this season. I got you, pal. You should know by now that pizza always has a place. I was searching for some pizza dough recipes and found a recipe for cold fermented pizza. The crutch of this dough is that every aspect is chilled to a refreshingly cold temperatures. My typo “00” flour sat in the freezer for a few hours and the water I added to the recipe was a crisp 40 degrees Fahrenheit. 

From what I’ve gathered, cold fermented pizza returns a crispier outer crust. It’s thin and parallels what Italy devours on the regular. It’s a departure from the recipes that require the dough to rise at room temperature for four hours and the yeast to dance with a warm cup of water before rising. 

The recipe resulted in a hefty amount of dough, dough that was a bit too soft for my liking. While it was spinning helplessly in my mixer I added more flour to get it to come together, but the results were still syrupy. On the plus side it’s soft and a pleasure to hold. Is there a possibility that these dough balls could double for kids toys? When the child is bored of playing with the dough you turn it into dinner. That’ll teach them to leave their toys around the house!

Here’s what the dough looked like after all was said and done. It’s sitting in my fridge as we speak. Surprising no one, they haven’t risen an inch. I’m worried, but I’ll put my faith in the pizza gods. They’ve yet to steer me wrong on this pizza pie we call life. 

Marc Vetri's Mortadella Pizza →

To be honest, I don’t know the exact reason why pizza dough does the things it does. I get that you need yeast for it to rise, but I’ve yet to block out a whole week and convert a shed from a rundown meth lab into a pizza lab to test out all my pizza theories. 

This recipe seems pretty complex and maybe it’s worth it, but I’ll tell you that this recipe from Emeril does wonders with some 00 flour. Regardless, I’ll test out Mr.Vetri’s recipe and let you know how it goes.