Big Green Egghead

Having lived in New York City for a number of years, I became quite fond of Neapolitan brick-oven style pizzas, such as those served at Lombardi’s, the oldest pizzaria in the United States (opened in 1905). While I love pizza’s many styles, my favorite has a thin NYC-style crust and is light on the toppings. While quality sauce and cheese are important, I’m a firm believer that the crust makes the pizza. I have discovered, over the past year, that the Big Green Egg makes an amazing pizza, particularly when it comes to crust quality. My favorite toppings are simple: Puréed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil leaves.

Amazing pizza dough is easier to make than you might think: Use approximately 4 parts high-gluten (bread) flour to one-part semolina flour (optional). Add 2/3rds of your flour to enough water to make a thick batter (not dough yet). Toss in a tablespoon of yeast and a dash of olive oil (optional). Let this batter rest for 20 minutes or so and gently knead in the rest of your flour until a nice dough-like consistency is reached. Form into balls and let this dough rise over a few hours, punching down once and re-forming balls if you’d like. Once the dough has doubled in size, its ready to use.

Fire up your egg at full bore (600+°F) and give your pizza/baking stone plenty of time to heat up completley. If you dont have a baking stone, get one now. This extremely hot dry stone will rapidly cook your crust to perfection. In general my pizzas are bubbling hot and fully cooked in under 10 minutes, often in 5.