Family Story
Which is your “freshest” pizza?
We once took a Claremon family trip to Ft. Lauderdale to visit our grandparents and also complete a family scuba certification course. After a long, draining morning of scuba class in the humid Florida summer, we stopped for a late lunch before heading to an evening with Bob’s parents and found a by-the-slice pizza place that had maybe a dozen varieties of pies in the display case. Scott, Steve, and Rachel all placed their orders quickly; Mike, on the other hand, proceeded to interview the teenager working the register as to the provenance of each type of pizza. “Which is your freshest pizza?” he asked, repeatedly, of the hourly employee, who clearly gave zero craps about this job. “Well, they’ve all been sitting here for a while,” she responded (or something to that affect). “Yes, but which is your freshest pizza?,” Mike kept repeating, while the rest of us groaned internally, just wanting to speed through this transaction so we could get some food.
Later that night, after a nice sit-down dinner with the Claremon grandparents, we walked over to an ice cream shop in that shopping center. Mike stepped up to the counter and started interrogating the similarly disinterested teenaged summer employee about the flavor offerings; Steve leaned over to Scott and Rachel and whispered, “Yes, but which is your freshest ice cream?”
Source: Inspired by King Arthur Flour
Ingredients
- 1 batch/bag of pizza dough
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced or grated
- 8 ounces mozzarella, divided
- Grated parmessan
Instructions
Take pizza dough out of the fridge and let it start to come up to room temperature.
Pour olive oil into a cast iron pan and add garlic. Add dough and turn to coat, spreading the garlic around as much as possible. Press the dough across the bottom of the pan, stretching it towards the edges. Allow to rest for 15 minutes, then press and stretch again.
Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let it sit for 1-2 hours. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 450 degrees with a rack in the bottom third of the oven.
Sprinkle about 3/4 of the cheese over the dough, covering it all the way to the edge of the pan. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the cheese is bubbling at the edge are golden brown. Remove from oven and add remaining mozzarella and a sprinkling of parmesan, to taste, and return to oven until additional mozzarella is fully melted.
Remove from the oven and transfer to a cutting board as soon as it’s cool enough to handle. Let it cool there a few minutes, then slice and serve while still warm.
Rachel’s
Secrets of Success
This is loosely adapted from a King Arthur Flour recipe for pan pizza, so if you are feeling ambitious you can make the dough from scratch using the original instructions, but I just go with a purchased bag of uncooked pizza dough from the grocery store. The recipe calls for mozzarella cheese, but I will also throw on provolone or anything else I have on hand that melts well and needs to be used up. But the magic here is the method – cook it in a cast-iron pan and make sure the cheese covers all the way to the edge, to ensure a crispy crust and a chewy interior.
Cooking with the Claremons 
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