Can I be your fren?

It's not for the home cook because home ovens don't get hot enough for the pizza to come out right. Whole milk aged mozz is the best thing for home cooking.

Another thing that most Italians do for pizza dough is use 00 flour. Unheard of over here.

This is one of the things I want when I build a house...

I can pretty much only eat homemade pizza now. My wife and I had to experiment for a while but finally came up with a good pizza crust recipe. I used to prefer thick crust but that's tough to do gluten-free. What we came up with is a thinner crust that gets good and crispy on the bottom but is still slightly chewy in the middle. You can't use it with a stone, though, because it is more like a batter than a dough (you have to pre-cook it before topping).

We don't do anything fancy with toppings or sauces. The pizza is almost always pepperoni, mushrooms, olives and pineapple. When it's just my wife and I at home again, we will branch out and try some different sauces, cheeses and toppings.

True re: the heat, but there are workarounds if you want to put in the effort.

That's just a good site for this thread in general, btw:

http://slice.seriouseats.com/the_pizza_lab/

And I wouldn't say 00 is unheard of. Rarer and a little more expensive, sure.

Just read this one...awesome.

Pumpkin and sausage is one of my favorite combos in pasta, never had it on pizza.

Since ours is already a functioning wood fireplace, its really just a matter of getting the correct "brick" and elevating it a bit so it's not right on level with the fire I think. Ours isn't real big, but big enough for a 14 inch pizza or a couple of chickens or something.

I'm not sure what our instructions say are optimal, but as long as I have it in there when I'm preheating the oven it works well. I rarely put the stuff in right when the oven beeps it's preheated though. I think convection helps in this process too, but I could be wrong. I really like convection.

I use it more when I make Stromboli as opposed to pizza because I don't have a nice pizza peel. Not only that, but the size of our pizza stone (rectangle) is better suited for stuff like Stromboli or small pizzas. It works well for frozen pizzas though.

I'm retired...

Most 00 flour I've seen available in the US is low protein (King Arthur 8.5%). The 00 Italian pizza flour is high protein (~12-13%). It's available here and it's expensive.

Oh, here is finally a topic we'll throw down on...

:Lin:

Granted I don't know where you're at or what you're paying but there are several places in my area that I could get imported Italian 00 for $3 a lb or under, which is about 3x the cost of all purpose flour (I usually use all purpose; there is a difference, but IMO all purpose is fine.). Whole Foods also usually has it (though I'm sure you'd overpay for it there).

Amazon has several options that you can get into for under $5/lb shipped.

It's more (and like I said, not worth it to me) but it's not that much more.

One pound is like 2 cups. That's not much for $5/pound. Just sayin'...

You're only using it for pizza...just sayin'. :D