Preparing Pizza

Pile on the toppings when making a pizza, but go easy on the sauce. Too much sauce will make the crust soggy.

Chef Mike Grossman discusses methods for preparing homemade pizza.

Baking on a pizza stone helps pizza cook more evenly. The stone absorbs moisture, as well as retains heat from the oven as the pizza cooks. If a pizza stone is not available, an inverted sheet pan makes a good substitute.
Always preheat the oven to 475 degrees to ensure that a pizza cooks evenly on the bottom.
Tossing the dough helps it stretch further.
Those big, flat wooden paddles used to slide a pizza into an oven are called pizza peels, and they make a great addition to a pizza tool collection. A flat, edgeless cookie sheet can also be used to slide a fresh pizza into a hot oven. Dust the peel or cookie sheet with semolina (the gritty, coarse particles of wheat left after the finer flour has passed through a bolting machine, used for pasta) before the dough goes on.
Shake the pizza gently to slide it from the pizza peel into the oven.
Ladle sauce into the center of the pizza. Using the bottom of the ladle, spread the sauce out from the center of the pizza in a circular motion. Make sure the sauce is thick because it will thin some as the pizza cooks.
When using raw sausage on a pizza, divide it into small pieces and place on top of the sauce layer to ensure it cooks completely.
Top the pizza with a large layer of cheese, and seal the cheese with the crust.
Add pepperoni to the top of the cheese layer so it will get nice and crispy, which changes the flavor.
Cook the pizza for about 10 to 12 minutes in a 475-degree oven.

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•	Preparing Pizza
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