Claire Makes Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

It really provides wonderful heat retention

and heat distribution when

you're trying to get something really crisp.

I feel like I just blacked out,

what did I just say about that?

[laughs] Oh no.

[guitar music]

Brad and I like to talk a lot about

what are you having for dinner tonight,

or what'd you make for dinner last night,

try to keep it fresh, get some inspiration,

and Brad famously makes a wonderful cast-iron pizza.

So I'm going to show you this recipe inspired by

the great pizzas that Brad makes at home.

One thing I like about this recipe is that

it really allows you to achieve

a wonderful crisp crust on the bottom

without needing a pizza stone

or like an oven that goes up to 600 degrees.

What I like about it is it uses a lot of ingredients

that are ready-to-go and that you can buy at the store.

So one of those is pizza dough.

This is 12 ounces, which is the right amount of dough

for a large cast-iron skillet.

The first thing I'm going to do is start to stretch this.

When it's room temperature,

it's much easier to stretch.

So if you're trying to stretch it,

and it's springing back,

just let it sit on your counter a little bit longer.

And I oiled it because I don't want to add flour.

It's gonna go into an already oiled skillet.

So I'm stretching this to a ten-inch round.

It could be a little bit bigger than ten inches,

because it will start to shrink back a bit.

And I'm leaving this ring round the outside

where it's a little bit thicker

so that's gonna be that edge of crust.

Alright, so this is going to be a fennel-topped pizza.

So I have Italian sausage

which is seasoned with fennel seeds,

and then some fresh fennel.

So right here it's thinly sliced.

This is on the mandolin.

You can go in with a knife.

So with toppings that are raw

like the fennel, thinly sliced is really ideal,

because you want it to be able to cook in the oven

in a pretty brief period of time.

Another important thing to mention,

I have my oven on 475,

with a rack on the very, very top.

So we're gonna cook this on the top rack,

and take advantage of the way

that the heat circulates in the oven.

So, the heat is going to radiating down

from the top of the oven,

directly on to the pizza.

So we're gonna be cooking it from underneath

in the cast-iron and from the top at the same time.

And that's going to mimic the way

like an actual pizza oven works.

That looks good.

So I left myself a little bit of wiggle room,

in case the crust wants to shrink back.

Just so this doesn't dry out,

I'm gonna cover it with some plastic,

while I start to build my toppings on the stove.

Okay, just lightly covered.

Now, here are my toppings

I have my fresh fennel,

some low-moisture mozzarella from the store

that was grated on the large holes of a box grater,

jarred marinara, just like a good quality marinara sauce.

This is Rao's brand, which I really like.

Kosher salt, a little extra olive oil,

and some garlic.

So the main topping though, is Italian sausage.

It's a half pound, which is about two links.

And I'm going to get this going

in the same cast-iron skillet

that we're gonna use for the pizza.

With a raw topping, like sausage,

we wanna cook it first,

because I want to make sure that it's fully cooked

before it goes into the oven.

Just in case it doesn't cook though all the way,

and also I wanted to release the moisture now,

rather than on top of the pizza,

which might make it soggy.

This is sweet Italian sausage,

that was removed from the casings.

You can use spicy Italian,

or any other kind of raw pork sausage,

even merguez, something like that.

I do all these recipes,

so these are the toppings that I like,

but if you have tried-and-true pizza toppings

that you love just use those at home.

Pepperoni's great.

I dunno, what do people put on pizza, Chris?

[Chris] What was that?

What do people put on pizza at home?

Pepperoni?

I said that one. Cheese?

We got cheese.

Brad probably puts green bell pepper.

Brad, you know what Brad loves to do?

Brad loves to put a drizzle of honey at the end.

Yeah on his pizza.

Like hot honey. Kind of a nice idea.

I mean, obviously, sausage is awesome

Yeah, this one is sausage and fennel.

What else is truly transcendent, though?

Oh, I'm not above a Hawaiian pie.

Oh god, please I'll just say it.

I'm sorry, I can't. I don't care.

I'm really-- I don't care. Not sorry.

I really don't, I'm like don't yuck on other people's

yums kind of girl, but I just can't do the Hawaiian.

What, it's like pineapple, good. Ham, good.

Pizza, good. Where's the problem?

Alright, to each his own.

I hear ya.

Okay, so the pan is preheated.

I can feel it's pretty hot.

Just have a tablespoon of oil,

like there's a decent amount of fat in this recipe,

and we're gonna add oil to the top,

before and after baking.

This oil is really jut to get the sausage going.

Oil facilitates heat transfer.

One of the keys here, too,

is that we're not gonna de-fat the skillet

after we take out the sausage,

because it's the fat that's in the bottom of the pan

that is going to help crisp and

almost fry the bottom of the crust.

As it cooks, try to break it up into smaller pieces.

Okay, so I will wanna take the sausage out of the pan.

And leave the fat behind.

So using a slotted spoon,

and the idea is that the heat in the pan

is going to start to cook the bottom of the crust.

You know, you kinda have to lay it down in one shot.

Its a little tricky.

There's a slight sizzle, I don't know if you can hear that.

Get my mike down there.

First thing I'm gonna do is just season

the whole surface of the dough, lightly.

Just kosher salt,

and now I'll go in with my marinara

This is a liquid ingredient

so you don't want to add too much.

I kinda like when the sauce goes right up to the edge.

Now the low-moisture mozzarella,

again like a nice even coating.

Here's one thing I like to do.

Maybe a little bit of cheese

falls along the outside of the crust.

Where the cheese hits the pan,

it kinda does that crispy,

crunchy, caramelized golden-brown cheese thing.

Which is really really nice.

I can hear it sizzling.

So not a ton of cheese.

Again, I don't want to waterlog the dough.

Now fennel.

So one reason why I'm going to drizzle

olive oil over this, before I bake it,

is because I want that fennel

to get a little bit of oil on it

so that it doesn't just dry out as it roasts.

It kinda cooks.

The fennel shrinks a lot in the oven,

so even though it looks like a lot,

you pull it out, it'll have much less coverage.

Same thing with the garlic.

I wanna make sure that it gets a sprinkling of oil

This is very very thinly sliced garlic.

It's three cloves.

I'm a garlic lover,

so and I like that kind of,

almost like half-cooked garlic flavor,

like there's still a little bit of the raw bite

on the pizza at the end.

But if you don't like as strong a garlic flavor,

or you don't like garlic at all,

you can leave it off.

And now the sausage.

So if there's any large pieces,

I'm gonna crumble them a little bit smaller.

And now two tablespoons of olive oil.

Really even drizzle, all the way around

you can get the top of the crust

that ring around the outside.

So I wanna pre-crisp the bottom of the crust

before I put it in the oven.

The crust went in to a hot pan,

so it started to cook,

and I wanted to just take a look

to see if there's any color on the bottom.

It's taken on just the lightest golden color.

I want to put it back on the heat

to get even more browning before I put it in the oven.

So I'm gonna bring it back over to this stove.

So I'm putting it on medium - medium -low.

So, what's happening here is really

the cast-iron is acting like

a pizza stone would or baking steel.

This is why cooking in cast-iron is so great,

because it really provides wonderful heat retention

and heat distribution when

you're trying to get something crisp.

Alright, I'm looking golden-brown on the bottom.

So it's gonna go in until the top has nice browning.

You'll see great bubbling around the crust.

The toppings are cooked.

So, it should be like in the range of 10 to 14 minutes.

Again, depending on how hot your oven is.

This is really heavy so I'm going to use two hands.

Alright.

Okay, I just checked on the pizza,

It's been there about 11 minutes.

It's looking done, so I'm gonna pull it out of the oven.

Carefully, 'cause it's hot.

So, its looking great.

Really nice browning all around the edge.

You can hear me try to like lift the edge, nice and crispy.

Bottom looks beautiful,

so I'm gonna bring it over here.

It has to cool,

it's burning hot right now.

So I'm just loosening it from the bottom.

Hopefully your cast-iron has a nice layer

of seasoning so that nothing sticks,

but, you know, the crust is well browned.

So that also means it will release from the bottom.

What I'm really loosening is the bits of baked-on cheese.

I'm gonna transfer it to my cutting board to rest for a bit,

and then I'm gonna finish it.

So you can se how crisp it is.

I can lift the whole thing out.

That's the beauty of cast-iron.

So I'm gonna finish it with some red pepper flakes.

We used sweet Italian sausage so there's no heat here.

So I like some red pepper flakes,

and these are the toppings that I don't want to bake.

I don't wanna burn the red pepper flakes.

I have some fresh basil here.

I like that fresh flavor.

Then just an extra, a very light sprinkling of salt.

And fresh olive oil,

because I like the kind of bright acidity that that adds.

A just a little bit, there's a fair amount of fat on here.

You an see how much the fennel really shrunk as it cooked.

So I think there's really nice

proportions of toppings on here.

Still with a nice crisp crust on the bottom.

So I'm gonna cut it.

This is a great dinner for four people

think, while it's baking you have about 10 or 15 minutes,

you can mix up just a salad.

Which is all you really need.

The crust is fully beaked through.

So it has a nice sort of fluffy texture on top of that

crisp layer on the bottom,

but I do want to point out here on the side,

this nice little area where the cheese got cripsy and brown,

Ready to try it? Yeah

Really good.

Perfect amount of salt.

You know, you have that nice richness

from the olive oil and the cheese,

but it's not soggy.

Really good balance.

The pieces of sausage got nice and crispy in the oven.

I love the flavor of the fennel seed,

plus the fresh fennel.

You can get everything at the store,

on your way home, preheat the oven.

Everything is prepped in the amount of time it takes

for the oven to heat up,

and in half an hour, 45 minutes you have everything done.

Quick salad, just give it a mix

while the pizza's in the oven and--

Great weeknight dinner.

So, thanks to Brad for wonderful inspiration.

Definitely worth it to invest in a cast-iron skillet.

They're not expensive, so versatile,

Hope you enjoy.

[Chris] Wish Brad was here to try those.

Yeah, Brad's in Sundance. Brad's in Park City, Utah.