The pizza that solved my pizza problems
I recently solved a pizza conundrum that had been plaguing my family. Pizza night at our house has always forced us to choose between an excellent but slow-rising dough that takes days to proof, or the instant gratification of a defrosted ball of store-bought. The marshmallow test, but pizza.
The homemade dough is sublime, baking into deeply flavored, leopard-spotted pies with puffy edges, but we have to wait four impatient days until we can eat it (our go-to is the Neapolitan dough from Marc Vetri’s book “Mastering Pizza”). And while the store-bought dough is speedy, it’s annoyingly inconsistent. Sometimes we get satisfyingly chewy though slightly bland crusts; sometimes we get a big misshapen cracker with cheese on top. It’s still pretty good — I mean, it’s pizza — but it doesn’t always live up to our expectations.
I felt there had to be a third option, a reliably good dough that I could make start to finish in one afternoon. And after much testing, I finally nailed it in my sheet-pan pizza al taglio (pizza by the slice).
Based on the popular Roman snack, my quick version can be made in under three hours, about one hour more than it takes to defrost and proof a ball of frozen dough and a thousand times better. It splits the difference between pizza and focaccia, with an airy, olive-oil-enriched dough that can be adorned with whatever toppings you love (anchovies, of course!). Next time you’re craving homemade pizza but are short on time, give it a try and let me know how it goes. I’m at hellomelissa@nytimes.com.
