Bar Pizza

Ingredients

Dough

• 102g water
• 2g instant yeast
• 13g olive oil
• 178g all-purpose flour
• 3.4g fine sea salt

Sauce

• 7.5 ounces canned crushed tomatoes
• 3-4 teaspoons tomato paste (25g)
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt (3g)
• 1 teaspoon sugar (5g)
• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
• heaping/rounded ¼ teaspoon dried minced onions
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 3 medium fresh basil leaves finely chopped
• ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
• heavy ⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Cheeses

• 2.5 ounces young cheddar cheese shredded
• 5-5.5 ounces mozzarella shredded

Instructions

Dough

1. Add ingredients to stand mixer with dough hook and mix on medium for 2-3 minutes or until a loose ball forms. Increase the speed to high and continue to mix for an additional 5 minutes.
2. When the dough looks smooth and is clearing the bowl, it’s ready. Shape into a ball, place the ball into an oiled container, and cover. Allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes then refrigerate for 24+ hours.

Sauce

1. Mix all ingredients; stir for a chunkier sauce, or use the blender or food processor for a smooth sauce.

Assembling and Baking

1. Bring dough ball out of refrigerator about 1.5 hours before you plan to begin making the pizza. Begin preheating oven to 550°F at this time.
2. To shape dough, turn dough out onto floured surface and roll into a circle a bit smaller than 14 inches in diameter.
3. Lightly oil pizza pan.
4. Place dough into pan, stretch it gently to reach the edges, and press it slightly up the sides of the pan.
5. Dock dough all over with a fork.
6. Add sauce on top of the crust, spreading with an offset spatula.
7. Top with the shredded cheese blend, add any other toppings you want, and sprinkle with about a tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese.
8. Place in oven on top of preheated pizza stone. Bake for 8 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for another 3 minutes.
9. Remove the pan from the oven, remove the pizza from the pan and check the bottom crust. If you’d like it a little darker, use a pizza peel to place the pizza back in the oven, directly on the stone, for another few minutes.

Notes

19 August 2026: For tonight’s mid-week pizza party experiment, I made the dough on Monday evening. Rich set the oven to 500°F at 4:00pm with stone on rack 2. Our oven runs hot at the high end, and it reached 545°-550°F by 5:00pm. I rolled out dough and put in oiled 14“ pizza pan (used regular Graza EVOO, a relatively light coating), and brought the dough up the sides of the pan about halfway. We added sauce, which we made basically as above (some alterations to the original recipe). We also did not put the sauce in the blender, but left it chunky, which we liked. Cheese was about 2.5 ounces of cheddar and 5.3 ounces of mozzarella (maybe a bit more), shredded. No parmesan was added when it was grated, but we did sprinkle a bit on before baking (maybe 1 tablespoon or a little less).

We placed the pan on the preheated stone and baked it for 8 minutes. Then we rotated the pan (not the stone) to even out the heating, and baked it for another 3 minutes. It was looking good, so we pulled the pan out and placed it on a cooling rack. The pizza came out very easily, so I was able to get the smaller wedge shaped spatula and the large wide spatula underneath and pull the pizza out directly onto the cooling rack. Then we lifted up the rack and noticed that the bottom crust could be a little darker, so we used the pizza peel to place it back on the stone for another 2 minutes. It came out great! We took it out with the peel, placed it on the parchment-covered cardboard, and cut as usual (putting half of the pizza back on the rack and then onto the top rack of the oven to keep it warm while we ate our first two slices.)

Note that the first time I rolled out the dough, I rolled it a bit too large/thin, so when I tried to pick it up and put it into the pan, it tore. I ended up reballing it and rolling it out again after letting it rest for a few minutes. I thought this would have completely ruined the texture, but it was perfect. So this is a good sign that this dough is pretty foolproof.